Consider Boulevard Trees for the Barren Side of Sunwood Drive in The COR

Street trees provide many environmental and community benefits, including beautification of urban areas, and creating shady sidewalks for pedestrians.  Sunwood Drive is essentially Ramsey's 'main street', with boulevard trees, sidewalk, streetscape and irrigation installed on alternating halves of the approximately one mile arterial roadway in 2008.  Planting trees on the opposite side sooner than later, will minimize the disparity in the height and canopy size of essentially a decade and a half differential in planting times for these new trees. 

Planting the trees in 2023, versus waiting years for individual parcels to develop along Sunwood will lesson the future visual lopsidedness of boulevard trees along Ramsey's most prominent street.  Completing the trees on both sides of this street would also improve the overall aesthetic in this area of the downtown, improve property values there, and will have traffic-calming benefits.  The installation of the trees and irrigation will also reduce the future streetscape costs for private developers for sites that abut Sunwood Drive—thus for the parcels the city would sell, there is an additionally theoretical increase in land sales value due to the established trees (if approved).

It may be reiterated here, that this proposed project only includes trees and irrigation; the future sidewalk, landscape, outdoor furnishings (benches, trash receptacles, etc.) are not envisioned with this project—these would be installed as individual development occurs on Sunwood Drive.

In 2022 the Public Works Committee authorized staff to issue a Request for Proposal to ascertain the costs for the proposed tree and irrigation project. The attached RFP details the scope of this work, and also parses the potential project into a Base Bid for the boulevard trees that abuts the city-owned property, and an Add Alternate for the trees in the right-of-way adjoining privately owned land.  This was also at the direction of the PWC. 

It is expected that staff will take up to 5 minutes to provide background on this proposed project and summarize the Bidding conditions, for the Committee's discussion.

While the whole of The COR is half built out, it may be many years before all of the parcels along 'main street' are developed—the 15-year disparity in tree sizes (2008 to 2023) will be noticeable if the trees are planted as this case discusses.  If the streetscape trees are only planted as each private development is competed along Sunwood Drive, the tree size differences would likely be dramatic.

In following through on the PWC's direction to issue an RFP; Anderson Irrigation, Fair's Nursery, Great Northern Landscapes and Grove Nursery were invited to bid on a Base Bid and an Add Alternate for the project, with the following proposals received: 

Contractor                                      Base Bid          Add Alternate
Anderson Irrigation                      $45,639           $51,785
Great Northern Landscapes           $50,015           $56,045

 

The proposed funding source is the Community Forestry Fund 0233.4608 which has a present balance of $76,730.

Staff recommends proceeding with the Base Bid planting only at this time of $45,639—the Add Alternate could be considered with some sort of cost sharing agreement with the adjoining landowner, or at a future time.

Motion to recommend to City Council _________   regarding the installation of boulevard trees and irrigation, at a not-to-exceed amount of $__________.