Greening Up Downtown Spokane

Imagine taking a backyard sprinkler system and stretching it throughout 30 city blocks in an urban downtown. That’s essentially what the city of Spokane did in the mid-1970s in an effort to sustain the trees planted along downtown sidewalks. “It’s the same sort of hardware (as a residential sprinkler system), but beefed up for a larger scale,” says Andrew Rolwes, public policy and parking manager for the Downtown Spokane Partnership. “Most of it is buried underground.” But a lot has changed downtown since then, and through years of building renovations and road construction, sprinkler lines have been severed in many places, putting the health of the street trees in jeopardy. In the 30-block area served by the sprinklers, maybe 10 blocks have functional systems, Rolwes says. Consequently, many of the downtown trees—already trying to survive in a tough environment for vegetation—don’t live long. The DSP, in partnership with the city of Spokane and the Spokane County Conservation District, is trying to change that. The groups have taken money left over from the downtown-tree local improvement district created for Expo ’74 and created a new downtown-tree grant program. Through the program, a downtown building owner can receive new trees and a $500-per-tree reimbursement for extending a water line from a building. “In a sense, it’s weaning downtown street trees off this downtown-wide system,” Rolwes says. “That’s the trend the city would like to encourage.” The water line typically costs more than $500, but economies of scale come into play when multiple trees are replaced. If a property owner replaces four trees and is eligible for a $2,000 maximum reimbursement, he or she should be able to cover the cost of the water lines with that amount. Spokane and its partners started the street-trees program last year, and 21 trees were planted downtown. Of those, 14 were done with grant money, and the balance was planted by property owners who didn’t take advantage of the grant. Some of the first property owners to make use of the street-tree grant program include Spokane Public Schools and the Fernwell Building owners. Last year, Spokane Public Schools replaced a handful of trees in front of its administration building at 200 N. Bernard. The owners of the Fernwell, at the southwest corner of Riverside Avenue and Stevens Street, replaced three of the five trees along its sidewalks. At the school district building, the six sidewalk trees were in bad shape, says Phillip Lindstrom, the district’s grounds foreman. Planted 30-some years ago, the trees had thinning foliage and excess seed production, a telltale sign that a plant is failing. Birds had stopped nesting in the trees. “They were all in a sad state,” Lindstrom says. “They were all in decline.” The school district replaced all of those trees last fall, as well as seven others in a courtyard just east of the building. The trees in the courtyard weren’t eligible for the program, because they technically aren’t street trees. The response to the new trees has been positive, Lindstrom says. “It’s really a good situation for our building,” he says. “It’s really important in that concrete jungle to have those street trees.” In the next 12 months, the DSP’s goal is to replace 40 to 50 trees downtown. “That would be phenomenal,” Rolwes said. Over the long term, he said the goal is to use of all the grant money in the next five years—though at the current pace, it likely will take longer. There is enough money in the old local-improvement district to pay for replacing about 250 trees, which Rolwes says is more than enough to cover the present tree-replacement needs in the city’s core. Late last summer, the city of Spokane Parks and Recreation Department commissioned a street-tree inventory for the Central Business District, generally considered the area bordered by Bernard Street to the east, Second Avenue to the south, Spokane Falls Boulevard to the north, and Monroe Street to the west. According to the study, 812 trees are inside the Central Business District. Of those, only 37 were classified as in poor condition or in severe decline. The majority—almost 60 percent—were said to be in good condition, with nearly all of the rest in fair condition. Spokane County Conservation District provides the trees, and typically, a property owner chooses from varieties of ash—white ash, green ash and blue ash—and lindens—little leaf lindens and American lindens. Rolwes says other species might be made available if the Conservation District has them in stock and if they are suited for downtown. There are many benefits to having a healthy stock of trees in the city’s core, Rolwes says. First, shade trees can cool urban areas during summer months, reducing what’s known as the heat-island effect. Hard, highly reflective surfaces like streets and sidewalks both reflect and absorb heat at the same time. Consequently, a well-treed city block typically is 5 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than a city block without trees. Once mature, trees also can help reduce air-conditioning costs in the buildings they shade. Trees can increase property values. “Any residential real estate agent will tell you a house that has a nice, mature, big tree has more resale value than a house that doesn’t,” Rolwes says. “The same is true for commercial properties.” The tree-inventory study conducted late last year placed a total value of downtown trees at just over $701,000, or between $800 and $900 a tree. But there also is an intangible value of having trees downtown, Rolwes says. “They are pleasant to look at. It’s a natural element in a man-made environment,” he says. “There’s something to the subjective value of trees.”