IT’S the pledge Newcastle council is making to the restless natives of Newcastle’s East End.
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By 2022, you won’t even remember that the trees of Foreshore Park were ever gone.
Facing another barrage of criticism from residents after the removal of 170 trees and shrubs for November’s Supercars event, the council has used “state-of-the-art computer imaging” to determine that in five years the shade coverage at the park will have increased by 2000 per cent, from 500 square metres to 9800 square metres.
“The computer modelling shows us that we will soon have a greener, more beautiful space where families will be able to picnic and play, cyclists and pedestrians will be able to move more freely and safely, and where parking will be far easier,” Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes said on Friday.
The council has tried to blunt criticism about removal of the trees by replacing them with approximately 230 plantings, including 130 “advanced shade trees”.
But now, after the inevitable controversy caused by their removal, council is urging residents to simply be patient and wait for the trees to grow back.
Council is also trying to sell it as an overall improvement to the park. As well as the new trees, the images show how Tug Berth Road – the one-way lane running parallel to Wharf Road – will be converted into a “dedicated cycleway”.
A shared pathway will now also connect the Bathers Way at Nobbys beach with the Joy Cummings Promenade, which leads to Queens Wharf.
“The existing path running beside Newcastle pilot station is a narrow bottleneck for both cyclists and pedestrians,” the council’s interim chief executive Jeremy Bath said. “These improvements will fix that issue, and pedestrian crossings on Pasha Way and Wharf Road will make it far safer.”
But whether residents will be won over by shade arithmetic is uncertain.
John Beach, a vocal opponent of the race, called talk about shade coverage a “deception”.
“How have we struggled by for all these years since their planting by the Queen in 1988, not realising how poor they were in providing shade?” he asked in an opinion piece in today’s Herald.
“Did the council actually take the decision to destroy these trees based on these figures?”
