Bert towers at 81 feet tall and 113 inches thick, and he has been rooted in the Gainesville community for nearly 200 years.
The bluff oak tree stands in the way of the College of Engineering’s Nexus building, a proposed expansion of the school’s teaching and research labs set to break ground in Fall 2016. As he faced the threat of removal, the UF Lakes, Vegetation and Landscaping Committee unanimously voted Thursday to require architects to attempt to redesign plans around him. The new plans would still have to be approved later by the same committee.
More than 20 students and even more faculty attended a committee meeting at 9 a.m. to advocate for 200-year-old Bert. Van Truong, a UF anthropology sophomore, helped Bert create his own Twitter account. She spoke in front of the committee and the project manager, detailing his great personality.
“We’re trying to promote an ethic of sustainability for the entire nation, and this is not a precedence that we should set,” she said.
Truong was attending the NCAA championship game in Indianapolis on Monday when she received a string of forwarded emails asking students and faculty to attend Thursday’s committee meeting.
“They asked me to work some magic,” Truong, 19, said. “It was a great opportunity to get conversation going on this issue, and so I humanized it, naming him Bert.”
Jason Smith, an associate professor of forest pathology, spearheaded the movement to preserve the state’s third or fourth largest bluff oak by placing a sign on the trunk. He said the project manager’s presentation didn’t take the tree’s well-being into consideration.
“I’ve traveled the world studying trees and have seen many instances where really impressive architectural designs have been used to preserve trees,” Smith said. “It’s just a matter of people making it a precedence for priority.”
At the meeting, Cydney McGlothlin, the expansion project’s senior project manager, argued for the removal of Bert and 34 other trees in the area planned for the 100,000-square-foot building’s renovation. She explained that safely moving the tree wasn’t possible and that a new design couldn’t incorporate keeping it.
“I don’t see how we can build something on this site and keep something of this size alive,” she said. “You could make the building taller, but then I think it would be a completely different dynamic in architecture.”
McGlothlin said she believes moving the 200-year-old tree will be impossible because its roots are entrenched above various utility lines, including electrical, sewage and high-pressure steam valves. The committee denied her request to remove the trees.
Smith said he believes the tree is priceless and should be preserved in any way possible.
“This is a unique species to this region in the U.S., and there’s very few left due to modern development,” he said. “This is a particularly fine specimen that is very, very old. It was here long before anyone else thought about all the things that were going to happen around it.”
The College of Engineering directed comment to UF spokeswoman Janine Sikes, who said all development projects pass through four separate committees for community members to give input.
“We absolutely have the utmost respect for the tree as well as the folks who are trying to save it,” Sikes said.
But she said she wasn’t sure they could design a building that avoided the tree due to the site’s proximity to the Reitz Union.
Smith said an online survey showed 98 percent of the roughly 1,500 who took it supported a redesign to save the tree.
Truong said she is hopeful Bert will continue to inspire generations of UF students.
“At our university, we all grow together,” she said to committee members. “For a tree to have lived for so many years, I can’t imagine it not surviving us.”
[A version of this story ran on page 1 - 4 on 4/10/2015]
Jason Smith, a 38-year-old UF forest pathology associate professor, poses on the North Lawn next to Bert, the approximately 200-year-old Bluff Oak that was threatened by the College of Engineering’s Nexus building, a proposed expansion to existing teaching and research labs.
Jason Smith, a 38-year-old UF forest pathology associate professor, poses on the North Lawn next to Bert, the approximately 200-year-old Bluff Oak that was threatened by the College of Engineering’s Nexus building, a proposed expansion to existing teaching and research labs.
