According to a Sept. 11 media release from the Dept. of Enterprise Services the 100-year-old bigleaf maple tree along 16th Ave. near the Capitol campus has reached the end of its life span and is decaying from within. At 60-feet-tall tree with an 80-foot-wide canopy DES staff says it poses a safety risk and needs to be removed. It salted for replacement using three ponderosa pine trees, which will be planted during landscape work for the Pritchard Rehabilitation Project.
The Olympian
A 100-year-old big leaf maple tree will be removed from the Washington state Capitol Campus on Friday.
The Department of Enterprise Services said in a news release that the 60-foot-tall tree with an 80-foot-wide canopy is decaying from within and has reached the end of its lifespan. DES said it is removing the tree because it poses a safety risk to pedestrians and parked cars in the Pritchard parking lot.
According to Brent Chapman, who works for DES buildings and grounds, the tree is approximately 90% rotten on the inside. Typically, the state would repurpose the wood from the tree, but the wood is too far gone, he said. The branches may still have some usable wood, he said, and sometimes the Kiwanis Club in Olympia can offer that to low-income families for firewood.
Additionally, other trees from campus are sometimes used for wood chips around campus, but the big leaf maple is too diseased to use for even that.
“It’s very sad but this tree has been really useful and healthy on campus for 100 years. It’s done a lot of really good things for the campus and the neighborhood,” Chapman said.
The total cost of the tree removal — including permits from the city for traffic control — is $14,700 and will come out of the operating budget, according to Chapman.
Another big leaf maple would be unlikely to thrive in the same location, DES and a landscape peer review committee determined. Instead, three ponderosa pine trees will replace the big leaf maple when landscape work is being done for the Pritchard Rehabilitation Project in about a year and a half to two years, Chapman told McClatchy.
Several more trees also will be removed during the Pritchard expansion project, but Chapman said that more new trees will be planted than were removed by a factor of two or three.
“The replacement plan aligns with urban forestry principles used to manage the Capitol Campus, which is an accredited arboretum,” DES said in the news release.
A detour will be in place between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Friday when 16th Avenue Southwest will be closed between Sylvester and Water streets.
A big crane will be used to remove the tree and those in the area can expect to hear chainsaws and grinders throughout the day.
TreeWalker in Olympia was contracted for the job, and a certified arborist for the company will be doing the work.
The removal comes just one month after the removal of a cherry tree on the Capitol Campus sparked an uproar. The dying tree was dedicated to the late state Sen. Cal Anderson, and the removal of the tree was not communicated before crews chopped it down.
The tree and plaque were later replaced on campus, along with several other dying cherry trees.
This story was originally published September 21, 2023, 1:44 PM.
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Shauna Sowersby was a freelancer for several local and national publications before joining McClatchy’s northwest newspapers covering the Legislature.
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