Can this forest be saved?
. . . or has the opportunity to save it been lost?
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AFFORDABLE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT:
Councilman who tried to save forest now favors development; Neighborhood chairman agrees to developers’ request for letter of support
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Please note: This website is not affiliated with the Woodridge Neighborhood Association, a quasi-governmental body chartered by the City of Columbia, Missouri. See full disclaimer at the bottom of this page.
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This website is one person’s loving tribute to a rare, untouched remnant of old-growth forest that has been doomed to destruction by the elected leaders of a midwestern college community.
In July 2008, an Oklahoma developer’s petition to rezone this thriving ecosystem for high-density office and residential construction was unanimously approved by the Mayor and the City Council of Columbia, Missouri.
Construction would permanently cover several headwater springs of a local stream system already so contaminated as to be named on the federal 303(d) list of impaired waterways.
More than 500 soaring canopy hardwood trees—some estimated by an expert arborist at well over 200 years of age—thousands of mature understory trees, and unnumbered individuals of ground-dwelling plant species (among them several species of native orchids), would all be scraped off the surface of the earth, and replaced with multi-story apartment buildings, offices, parking lots, and a mere handful of ornamental landscape plantings.
The wildlife that are at home in this rare oasis of green—a secret stream-riven covert bounded by medical and commercial office buildings, motels, and strip-mall retail outlets along a busy stretch of Interstate Highway 70—would find themselves with no safe place to go.
Neotropical migrant birds that come to this lovely woodland summer after summer would return to find their nest trees gone forever.
Fortunately for the forest and those who love it,
destruction has been delayed for three years!
A year and a half after the developers won the city’s official approval of their plan, they had failed to secure the funding needed to begin construction, and the forest was taken in foreclosure by one of the mortgage holders, Legacy Bank of Oklahoma City. 
It was then offered for sale, along with the former owners’ city-approved plans, for $1.1 million.
It was then offered for sale, along with the former owners’ city-approved plans, for $1.1 million.Friends of this pristine forest tried to interest the city’s closest neighborhood association in working to raise money to buy it as the city’s first “urban forest preserve,” and sought help from elected officials and from local, state and national conservation and land trust organizations—but the opportunity to save it may now have been lost.
A bid has been made by a Kentucky developer of affordable rental housing to purchase the forest as the site for an apartment complex to be called “Sunrise Meadows at Berrywood.”
This plan has been endorsed by the councilman whose district includes the forest—the same councilman who earlier in the year had attempted to broker a property trade that would have placed the forest in permanent conservation under the city’s auspices.
In November 2011, the developers asked the Woodridge Neighborhood Association president for a letter supporting their application to the state Housing Development Commission for funding to implement their plan. The letter states:
“Although the neighborhood consensus
prefers that the property never be developed,
we are writing to express support for Sunrise Meadows . . .”
So the forest’s last hope of reprieve from destruction may now be at an end.
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Special thanks to the Columbia Missourian and to KOMU-TV in Columbia, Missouri, for mentioning this website in their coverage of the threat to the city’s last remaining fragment of true forest ecology!
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To navigate this site, please use these links, or the menu at the top of the page.
(A Year in the Life of an Untouched Urban Forest)
A Flora of the Little Forest (219 plant species identified to date!)
The Waterways (including QuickTime video clips)
(most recent entry datelined November 2011)
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This site is supported entirely through private funds. It receives no financial contribution from the Woodridge Neighborhood Association. It is not owned by, or formally affiliated with, either the Woodridge Neighborhood Association or the Woodridge Recreational Club. Text and photos on this site were produced by the site designer, who is solely responsible for the content.
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Due to technical changes required by its internet host, this site will not be renewed
at the time of its next annual expiration date.
This site was last updated on December 31, 2011.
