Echo Times

Issue date: 9/25/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Shawn Mehrens A student at the Kentfield campus peaks at the fallen redwood.

Returning to school after a sunny Labor Day weekend, many students and faculty members were dismayed to find that contractors at College of Marin's Kentfield campus had felled and stripped a large redwood tree of its branches.

Taking the detour path around the site of the new Fine Arts center, passersby stopped to peek through the mesh-covered chain link fence surrounding construction near Circle Drive. There they saw a haze of earth and sawdust, and a prone 80-foot-tall trunk, where the tree had once stood.

At least one student was moved to tears over the incident, and several professors expressed anger as well, including James Tipton, who said he would rather, "see new carpets and paint for the existing, deteriorating buildings than to see redwood trees destroyed for new development."

More than 40 students signed petitions given to the Echo Times, conveying outrage and sorrow over the tree's death.

According to V-Anne Chernock, director of modernization, the redwood tree was removed because it stood in the footprint of the new Fine Arts Building. Estimated by school officials at between 40 and 50 years old, the tree was determined to be significantly younger than the nearby grove of protected redwoods.

"It was a young tree, still shooting out roots that could push out pavement around the building," Chernock said. "It had to go."

A rare event in Marin, where redwood trees are protected, cutting one down is something the college can legally do because it is under the jurisdiction of the Division of the State Architect.

While the news and the sight stunned some, the department of modernization, created to oversee the college's spending of the $249.5 million bond passed in 2004, had decided the fate of the tree several years ago, Chernock noted, while planning the new building with contractors, administrators, as well as groups of students and teachers.

Many of the students who had a chance to speak on the issue, however, are no longer at COM. Even some professors who helped with the planning were taken aback by the tree loss.

"The fine arts department did have input into the interior spaces of the new Fine Arts Center," Carol Leftkowitz said. But, she added, "we took no part in the discussions concerning the tree removal required for the new building's construction."

Continued...

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