As of August 8th almost 400 people have signed this petition to save the depot park trees. This is amazing support for our public green spaces. We have just a few more days before the 6pm Tuesday 8/12 city council work session on this draft plan to redevelop depot park, and it would be great to get to 500 signatures or more before then. Please share on your social media and let your friends know.
This is the link to join the session at 6pm on Tuesday August 12, which will discuss the first street/depot park plans as well as the 3rd street beautification project:
Zoom information is here: Join from PC, Mac, iPad, or Android: https://cityoflaramie.zoom.us/j/82561638174?pwd=GtgNoEpjz5a3saZafQ7SncG9auECl4.1 Passcode:156898, Webinar ID: 825 6163 8174.
Visit this link to learn about how to sign up to offer public comment at the meeting:
https://www.cityoflaramie.org/68/City-Council
The deadline for submitting public comments 6 days before the meeting has passed, but I still recommend contacting the council and city clerk with your comments:
email: council@cityoflaramie.org
Please email: clerk@cityoflaramie.org
We had one city council member respond to the petition. Mayor Sharon Cumbie’s response is below:
Jul 15, 2025
This project is in the planning phase in which we are seeking input from our community. The petition is an excellent way to demonstrate community sentiment and will have an impact. I think. Please encourage people to send their opinion on the 1st street project.
Some of the trees north of depot are aging out and have become hollow toward the center. All trees were assessed by city arborist for health and trees south of depot are healthy. The hollowed one will need to come down due to risk of injury to public as a wind gust could snap off tree parts the tree. Any tree removed will be replaced.
Best Regards
Sharon
It makes sense to remove the hollow tree while preserving as many healthy trees as possible, especially in south depot park where it adjoins a residential neighborhood. The paving near the hollow tree is probably part of why it is unhealthy, not the inherent age.
— Greg, Depot neighborhood resident
PREVIOUS UPDATE as of July 25:
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.
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 emails that 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. “