City of Cedar Rapids puts out the call for holiday trees

CEDAR RAPIDS — Repurposing has been a buzzword in everything from fashion to home design. For the past 25 years, the city of Cedar Rapids has applied this concept to holiday traditions.

Each year the city’s forestry division seeks a homeowner to donate an evergreen tree — fir, pine or spruce — to be used as the city’s Christmas tree placed in Greene Square and decorated for the holiday season.

The August 2020 derecho made that task more challenging, though.

And it can’t just be any evergreen.

City Arborist Todd Fagan said the tree needs to meet several requirements to be considered. An eligible tree must be planned for removal due to circumstances that cannot be remedied; it must be more than 25 feet tall; and it needs to be located in a spot that is not difficult to access.

“Homeowners need to be looking to get rid of the tree, not just because they don’t want it anymore,” he said. “Maybe it has outgrown its space or has created visibility issues say by a driveway.”

The selection process involves Fagan going out to look at each candidate.

“I look to make sure that it is accessible. It might be a great tree, but if we can't physically get it out without destroying it, then it's not worth it to us.,” he said.

If selected the tree will be removed by crane so as not to damage any of the canopy or any of the sides of the tree. “If we have to drag it around, that’s no good,” Fagan noted.

The city removes the tree free of charge for the homeowner and grinds the stump. The city in turn saves on the cost of purchasing a tree.

Once the tree is selected and then is being cut down, Fagan said it usually garners a lot of neighborhood attention.

“A lot of people in the neighborhood come out to watch because there’s all kinds of equipment there and then there's a 40-foot tree flying through the air for a little bit before it lands and trailer,” he said. “It's always kind of neat when people come out and watch that.

“And then we always get a positive response from people who see the tree up and decorated in Greene Square park. It’s a nice holiday spectacle.”

In years past, trees have come from across the city, and even from surrounding towns like Ely. Fagan said the city especially appreciates when it works out to use a tree that is located near Greene Square because transporting the tree is quite the process.

It also has been a tradition for the last several years to have the homeowners who donated the tree flip the switch at the annual tree lighting ceremony that happens the first weekend in December.

“Most people really get a kick out of that,” Fagan said.

Fagan noted that while the city is looking for residents to contact it now, they also may reach out at any time in the year if they have a tree to be considered that they’d be willing to keep until the city is able to retrieve it.

“Usually, we put out a press release and we would get several people to respond, so we’d have a list of trees we could review. We might then have five trees, so we’d be set up for a few years. Most folks were OK with leaving the tree until we need it, and it worked out really well.”

A 35-foot Colorado blue spruce was donated by the Jenay Sullivan family for 2019, the city reported at the time. A spruce was donated by the Steepleton family for last year, but the lighting ceremony was held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As if to make the process more challenging, along came last year’s derecho and the list of potential trees the city had going was depleted.

“We scrambled to find one for last year,” Fagan recalled. “But we’d like to get back to the point where we aren’t scrambling every year.”

Fagan noted he believes the city has found this year’s Christmas tree, but definitely wants to build the list for years to come.

While it has always been the intention of the city to take down only trees that needed to be removed for some reason, staff reiterated that healthy trees will not and never have been considered for removal.

“The city values every tree in Cedar Rapids, and now — more than ever — is sensitive to the loss of any tree. Trees decorated for the holidays are only used if they would be removed anyway and can be repurposed,” said Gail Loskill, Parks and Recreation communications specialist for the city.

“The homeowners have always been meant to drive this, not the other way around. It’s our hope that they will call us when they have a tree that needs to come down. It can mutually beneficial. We are doing everything we can not to take down trees unnecessarily.”

Homeowners who have a tree that might meet the conditions for donation are asked to email forestry@cedar-rapids.org with the owner’s name and address as well as information about the tree.