Charlottesville has removed several trees from West Main Street

If you’ve traveled on West Main Street in the past few weeks, you may have noticed that several trees have been reduced to their trunks.

In all, the Parks and Recreation Department have removed 10 Zelkova trees and pruned 11 along the road that connects the University of Virginia with Downtown Charlottesville.

“The trees that were removed were deemed hazardous due to the level of their decline and their relative locations,” said Steven Gaines, the city’s urban forester.

By locations, Gaines refers to their proximity to street corners, lights and crosswalks.

“It is likely that additional trees along West Main will be pruned in the coming months, but there are no immediate plans for further tree removals this year,” Gaines said.

A request for additional information from the city is pending at publication time.

In the last decade, the City of Charlottesville paid millions of dollars for a detailed plan to upgrade infrastructure on West Main Street that was ultimately canceled by City Council in the summer of 2022.

One of the issues identified in the Rhodeside & Harwell plan was a “monoculture of trees.”

Part of the solution was to plant new trees in specially designed cells that would keep roots from growing out into the sidewalk. Take a look at these in a presentation made to the Architectural Review Board in 2018 (download the presentation)

The Charlottesville Tree Commission will meet on March 4, 2025 at 5 p.m. They’ll discuss the removal of the trees.

“Staff is working with Public Utilities and Public Works to grind stumps and have plans for trip hazard mitigation first week of March,” reads the agenda. “Further planning for street trees along W Main will be a spring task.”

Before you go: This post was originally published in the February 27, 2025 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement, a newsletter powered by Substack since July 2020. The idea is to get as many stories out as possible each day, and then some of the material ends up here. Sometimes stories are posted here first. All of this is an experiment powered by Town Crier Productions, currently a one-person company that seeks to be as prolific as possible.