Thanks to everyone who has signed this petition so far. It means a lot to know that everyone cares about Laramie’s public green spaces and historic trees that add so much to the depot neighborhood.

— Greg, Depot neighborhood resident

UPDATES

The assistant city manager, Todd Feezer has said  that the city council work session for the first street project along Depot Park as well as the third street beautification project will be held on August 12, 2025.

If anyone would like to commit to attending and making our voices heard that would be wonderful because Greg will be out of town that day.

Greg has run several tree-saving alternatives by Todd Feezer to try to problem solve, but none of them seems workable at this point and there won’t be another iteration of the vision document before August 12. So the image you see above represents what the consultants have come up with.

Todd Feezer has also mentioned that they will replace trees two to one, but it is hard to see how any replacement tree would have the same quality of these 90 year-old trees with their large canopy that provides shade, bird habitat, noise and wind buffer, and so many other helpful qualities.

Copying the following from two recent emailsthat Todd Feezer sent:

”The parking lot increases from 89 spaces to 100 spaces, the on-street parking will increase from roughly 18 spaces (difficult to ascertain the true amount of parking due to unorganized nature) to 28 spaces in the north section and the on-street parking increases from roughly 34 spaces to 64 spaces in the south section potential around 50 additional spaces.  The historic shelter will be relocated to the SE corner of the park.”

“The most recent iteration of the plan set is attached for your review.  These are from a meeting we had with UP regarding gaining space around the parking lot, expanding the entire west edge of the park, and extending the fence further south to deter access to the rail yard.  There will not be any more iterations until we have council weigh in at the work session.  I appreciate your efforts and passion for the trees.  As I have said and continue to say…the balance is initially parking vs existing trees and secondarily parking vs traffic flow.  This project does not have any relation on the 1st Street Parking Lot, it was brought forward by Council with a budget amendment to specifically look at increasing parking along 1st Street between Garfield and Park.  Keep in mind if trees are removed we replace them 2 to 1, not always in the same location but always 2 to 1.  DDA did visit us at one of the meetings however, there is no formal position from DDA or LMSA at this point.  I do know the width of 1st Street is due to it’s back of building or alleyway nature, problem for our team working this project is current Fire Code requires 20’ clear space. “