Trees down, tempers up

Memorial Way

View of Memorial Way construction site looking south toward Red Square.

Buses, parking and trees are nearly always a recipe for campus controversy. So when campus landscape and transportation planners sited a traffic turnaround between two war memorials along Memorial Way, they expected some dissatisfaction. But when two sycamores from the World War I memorial were destroyed, along with a neighboring pine tree, tempers boiled over.

It is a story of planners trapped between conflicting demands to respect signature campus landscapes, to be bus-friendly and a good neighbor to the city and University District community and to keep the campus accessible to students, employees and visitors.

The site of the latest flare-up is the southern end of Memorial Way, between Denny and Parrington halls, where a row of 103 sycamore trees converge with a new World War II memorial at the flagpole and a traffic turnaround currently under construction. The sycamores are a memorial to students and alumni who died in World War I.

The trigger point of the discontent seems to be the decision to move the turnaround three feet north to keep it a respectful distance from the World War II memorial. That move necessitated destroying two sycamores and one western white pine. Adding fuel to the flame was the later discovery that the two sycamores were among the 58 trees specifically designated as part of the World War I memorial rather than among the trees planted to fill in the area. In addition, the root systems of three other sycamores were damaged during excavation and may eventually be lost.

To critics, destruction of natural beauty and disrespect of war heroes to make way for a traffic turnaround, especially one that will serve as access to a bus staging area, seem like highly inappropriate actions.

Response to these concerns must be mediated with current demands for access to campus, say proponents. Working with Metro to make campus a bus-friendly place helps students, staff, faculty and visitors as well as the university’s neighboring community, they contend.

Also, adding transit buses to the mix alleviates the anticipated loss of bus parking in N-2. (N-2 will become part of the new law school, scheduled to be built beginning in spring 2001.) But keeping the traffic a respectful distance from the new World War II memorial around the flagpole was also an important consideration to planners, especially considering the trees were deteriorating and becoming hazardous.

William Talley, campus landscape architect, and Peter Dewey, manager of the UW Transportation Office, acknowledge they would have done some things differently, if given the opportunity. Although the extensive planning meetings concerning changes along Memorial Way began in 1996 and included selected faculty, staff and students, more outreach would have been helpful.

However, some of the complaints seem unfounded, planners say. Public school buses delivering students to the Burke Museum and other campus facilities and events have been parking along Memorial Way for years. Every morning and evening cars drive down the dead-end street to drop off or pick up faculty, staff and students, creating a makeshift turnaround in a busy pedestrian area. Allowing Metro and Community Transit buses to park there and installing a safe traffic turnaround seems only to acknowledge—and improve—what already goes on along the roadway.

“Some mornings I’ve seen 50 cars drive down there to drop someone off and turn around, although it has not been a particularly safe place to do so,” Talley said. “It seems like designing a traffic turnaround for the space was becoming a safety necessity.”

Additionally, concerns about the historical importance of the trees might be misguided. The opinion that each of the 58 memorial trees was dedicated to a particular individual killed in World War I has not been verified. Two plaques at the entrance to Memorial Way listing all 58 students and alumni killed in action—57 men and one woman—honor them as a group.

Another change along Memorial Way is the planned relocation of the Class of 1912 garden and sundial. With the help of Kurt Keifer, campus art coordinator, and Woodruff “Woody” Sullivan, an astronomy professor, the garden and sundial will be planted in a sunlit site that will be as ceremonial as its former one and more functional. Sullivan has designed and placed a number of working sundials, including the one on the southern exterior wall of the Physics-Astronomy building.

These compromises, hammered out over three years of meetings and reviews, are expected to result in a re-opened Memorial Way by Labor Day. In the meantime, discussions among campus planners, transit authorities and detractors will continue in the hopes of finding common ground.¶

Nedra Floyd Pautler