Monday, June 4, 2007
The $31 million-dollar expansion of practice fields, weight rooms, and coach’s offices at Memorial Stadium is destroying over 100 trees in the area, including nearly a dozen oaks and maples that are almost 60 years old.
This has angered those who picnic in the area and even enjoy climbing the trees.
Andrew Flanery, Kansas City, Kansas, senior and president of the KU Tree-Climbing Club said he was saddened by the loss of the trees in that area because his club enjoyed climbing the large specimens.
“The football team is already treated like royalty,” Flanery said. “I don’t think they needed that large of an area for football.”
Photo Gallery
Memorial Stadium Construction
Construction of the Anderson Family Football Complex has led to the destruction of numerous campus trees
Despite the frustration of losing acres of natural landscape, he said they will continue to climb throughout campus. Flanery also said he was pleased that his group wouldn’t lose the entire climbing area south of Memorial Stadium where many of the larger trees are located. The University has taken extra measures to diminish the loss of the older oak and maple trees. A promised $414,000 is expected for landscaping replacement, with $200,000 of that directly going to tree replacement.
University Architect, Warren Corman, said he hates to see the trees fall, but the limited space for the project didn’t leave them a better option during the design stages. He said that not everything could be saved when reconstructing nearly 35 acres of land.
“Cutting down trees, especially old ones is a pet peeve of mine,” Corman said. “But you can’t have a tree in the middle of a practice field.”
The University plans to plant more than 200 trees for the loss incurred during construction. Mark Reiske, associate director of design and construction management, said the campus will be more beautiful once the landscaping is completed.
“We are going to plant two or three trees for every one lost,” Reiske said. “We will try to replace all the hardwoods that are being cut down.”
Corman said the Kansas coach Mark Mangino was less concerned about the loss of the trees and more concerned that the team had lost nearly one quarter of their allotted practice time every day due to the busing back and forth between the old practice fields southwest of Allen Fieldhouse and the football stadium.
“The NCAA only allows so much time for practice and coach felt losing that to transportation really hurt,” Corman said. “Other Big 12 schools like Kansas State and Oklahoma have their facilities all together and KU should too.”
Along with the loss of trees, Mississippi Street will be closed from Jayhawk Boulevard to 9th Street while a new lane for bus transit will be put in and is planned to be complete by the fall.
University spokesman, Todd Cohen, said the temporary inconvenience will greatly benefit campus transportation in the long run.
“The new bus lane will provide a new bus stop location for parking and transit,” Cohen said. “When everything is complete we hope to have a bigger and more complete area around the stadium.”
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