River Park Square replacing trees along Main Avenue in downtown Spokane

River Park Square is in the process replacing the rows of trees along the Main Avenue sidewalk in front of the popular downtown shopping destination.

The few-weekslong project is set to repair cracked and leaking concrete underneath the tree wells that is allowing water to drip into an underground storage area used by the mall and its stores, said Sierra Stonich, operations manager for River Park Square.

“We’ll suck the dirt out, then seal where the dirt was, then reinstall,” she said.

Nine honeylocust trees were removed Wednesday afternoon and will be replaced in about two to three weeks with Kentucky coffeetrees, said Angel Spell, Spokane’s Urban Forester. She said the new trees will have similar look and function as the honeylocusts.

“I think they’re pretty happy with the trees they have selected,” she said. “They’ll both feel similar.”

Stephanie Hines, along with her friend Jill James, were stealing a spot of shade under the umbrella awning set up in front of the mall’s front doors Wednesday afternoon when crews came by with wood chippers.

James said people can often overreact toward these types of events.

“Everyone sees trees getting removed and they automatically think the worst,” she said.

Hines, who noticed the green signs set up by Urban Forestry saying the trees will eventually be removed, said she didn’t mind, as long as new trees will take their place.

“To be honest with you, I didn’t even notice they were there before,” she said. “But if they’re going to replace them, that’s great.”

Perhaps the person most affected by the change, at least while the old trees were getting turned to sawdust on the side of the road, was Zed Zorander, a traveling musician whose favorite spot in Spokane to play his acoustic guitar is right in front of the mall.

“I actually had to put my guitar down for about 10 minutes before I could start playing again,” said the musician, who played covers of “House of the Rising Sun” and “Landslide.” “It was pretty loud. Pretty noisy.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated July 20, 2017 to fix the spelling of Main Avenue.