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Cedar Street redesign and nearby corridor planting discussed; commissioners weigh tree-retention costs
Summary
City staff said the Cedar Street reconstruction will be delayed for more public outreach and cost-estimating after Council workshop feedback; commissioners discussed expensive options to retain large maples and a neighborhood grove.
City staff updated the commission on the Cedar Street road project and related tree impacts, and a resident offered a separate idea to plant a tree buffer along the Highway 2 corridor between Boyer and Division.
Staff reported that a March workshop with City Council raised competing interests and that the project will return to the public for further input. The takeaway is the project will likely be delayed from the originally planned summer construction and rolled to the next year while staff develops additional design options and cost estimates to explore tree-preservation alternatives.
Commissioners focused on a large maple and a small grove near the library and discussed mitigation approaches: protecting roots with curb/traffic-table solutions, shifting the road alignment to the north, or right-of-way acquisition. Staff cautioned that saving the large maple could be expensive—estimating root protection and regrading could reach tens of thousands of dollars (staff remarked a reservation cost “something like $50,000 or $75,000” as a plausible order of magnitude). Staff said right-of-way acquisition is possible but "extremely unlikely" because of cost. The project team also discussed reducing roadway width to reduce base and asphalt volume as a cost-savings measure.
During public comment, Brad Smith, a city resident, proposed planting trees in the ITD right-of-way along Highway 2 between Boyer and Division to provide shade, improve visual character, and buffer the bike path. Staff said ITD owns the right-of-way and that irrigation would be required to sustain planted trees; staff noted that donated conifers could be an option but that long-term irrigation and maintenance are the primary hurdles. Smith and commissioners also discussed pedestrian and multimodal safety in that corridor; staff said portions of the bike path and adjacent rights-of-way are maintained by different agencies and that a corridor planting would require interagency coordination.
Ending: Staff will develop cost estimates and additional public-outreach materials for Cedar Street options that better assess trade-offs between tree retention and project costs; the Highway 2 corridor idea will be explored informally with city staff and potential partners subject to ITD permission and irrigation feasibility.
