Wednesday, February 19, 2025

18 trees to be removed from Market Street this month

Oak trees on Market Street. (Port City Daily/File)

WILMINGTON — A project that was supposed to take place earlier in the year, but was delayed due to the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge preservation project, will begin Tuesday.

READ MORE: More than a dozen trees to be replaced on Market St. due to ‘incurable conditions’

On June 11 at 9 a.m., city crews will begin tree removal along Market Street, known for its oak canopy. Eighteen diseased trees need to be eliminated, located between 17th and 21st streets, a heavily trafficked corridor.

City staff has requested mitigation and replacement of infected laurel oaks and one live oak. They pose a public safety problem due to potential fallen branches (Port City Daily covered the project last August; read it in full here).

The laurel oaks — past their age of 50-plus years — are being removed due to heart rot. Decay takes over from the inside-out caused by multiple, untreatable fungi species.

Assistant Director of Community Services Sally Thigpen told PCD last summer, staff want to replace them with trees that have a longer life span, are less immune to disease, and optimal for space and cost. Live oaks will be replanted this winter.

Though crews begin work at 9 a.m. Tuesday, starting June 12 through the end of the month, work will begin at 7:30 a.m. and should wrap daily by 5:30 p.m. Full street closures for the area are planned and detour routes will be posted along the roadway.

The project is expected to finish by the end of the month.


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Shea Carver
Shea Carver
Shea Carver is the editor in chief at Port City Daily. A UNCW alumna, Shea worked in the print media business in Wilmington for 22 years before joining the PCD team in October 2020. She specializes in arts coverage — music, film, literature, theatre — the dining scene, and can often be tapped on where to go, what to do and who to see in Wilmington. When she isn’t hanging with her pup, Shadow Wolf, tending the garden or spinning vinyl, she’s attending concerts and live theater.

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