Shop owners in Wollongong’s Crown Street Mall are divided over what impact recently planted spotted gum trees will have along the busy retail strip.
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Wollongong City Council workers were first seen planting the trees on Monday before removal of the construction barrier fence began yesterday.
Crown Street retail store YD. manager Fabian Di Fazio said he was concerned customers would be put off by leaves blowing into the shop.
‘‘We’ll have too much cleaning to do,’’ he said.
‘‘I don’t like them [the trees] at all.
‘‘If they are going to put a tree there, that’s cool, but they need a tree that doesn’t cause mess.’’
Mr Di Fazio also raised concerns the trees would attract birds that would then soil the mall.
Lou Asanoska, who manages retail store Dotti in the mall, said there was a risk people would slip on any leaves blown into her shop.
‘‘It makes it dangerous if leaves are in the store,’’ she said.
‘‘Maybe they should choose a different tree.’’
However, Ms Asanoska said she liked the idea of there being ‘‘greenery’’ in the mall.
A council spokesman said council had sought the advice of specialist arborists who confirmed spotted gums were not a limb-dropping species, and said council staff would maintain the mall, regularly cleaning leaves.
The council has gone so far as to construct a continuous tree trench containing an irrigation system to create optimum growing conditions for the trees.
‘‘Following installation, council will be undertaking regular inspections and maintenance of the trees,’’ the spokesman said.
Courtney Phenning, who manages Crown Street retail store Collette, said any issues caused by the trees would pale in comparison to the frustration faced by shopkeepers while construction works have been under way.
‘‘It’s noisy, it doesn’t make customers want to come in,’’ she said.
‘‘We have to close the doors sometimes and customers think we’re closed.
‘‘If you think about it, we have to vacuum and clean every day anyway...it’s not that hard to clean up.’’
The trees were approved back in 2011 along with the new design for Crown Street Mall.
Construction work has been put on hold for three months to give shoppers and shop owners a break from noisy drilling, digging and dust over the busy Christmas and New Year period.
Reaction to ‘widow-makers’ in city mall
Wollongong City Council’s decision to plant gum trees in Crown Street Mall has brought a strong response from Mercury online readers.
The Mercury’s online poll revealed opinions were almost evenly split, with 50.2 per cent of the 447 respondents believing gum trees were a good idea in the mall.
One reader, ‘‘Vic’’, described the planting as ‘‘another idiotic decision from a council with no accountability and proficient at squandering ratepayer funds’’.
‘‘In 15 years’ time, they will cut them down at our expense because they are lifting the pavement and damaging underground services as per the plane trees on Kembla Street,’’ he wrote.
The danger posed by falling tree limbs was referenced by several readers, including one who went by the name of Smithy.
‘‘My father was in the timber industry all his life and referred to gum trees as ‘widow makers’ for their well-known tendency to – without warning – drop heavy limbs on people’s heads, killing or severely injuring them,’’ Smithy wrote.
But gum tree fans were also vocal in their support of the species.
One online reader, by the name of Crowy the Gum Tree Lover said: ‘‘Now the whingers cry and moan about the gum trees and how their deadly heat-seeking falling limbs will take out innocent bystanders.
‘‘I dare say that the intelligent landscape architects...would have thought about said deadly heat-seeking falling limbs and specified the trees be inspected regularly by an arborist and dead wooded when necessary, therefore protecting the innocent from those scallywag gum trees.’’