SOUTH PITTSBURG, Tenn. – June was not a good month to be a tree in downtown South Pittsburg.
City leaders for years have debated problems with the Chinese ginkgo trees that were planted along both sides of Cedar Avenue downtown in the late 1990s.
In late June, newly hired City Administrator Gene Vess ended the debate abruptly.
“Yes, we took the trees down,” Vess said at the South Pittsburg City Commission’s July meeting. “If you went around town and after we started cutting the trees down, we really realized just exactly how bad they were.”
He said some of the trees had grown into the sidewalk grates and buckled the concrete in many spots.