Johns Hopkins University went ahead and did it. It cut down nine trees on Remington Avenue for its Data Science and AI (DSAI) Institute project despite months of protests, a petition with more than 2,000 signatures, and a community group’s last-minute cease-and-desist letter that claimed the university was acting without clear legal authority.

Visibly emotional residents watched yesterday as chainsaws whined and crews in bucket trucks brought down the small limbs and finally the big trunks of mature city-owned Northern Red Oaks and fed them into wood chippers.

“We have every right to be here on public property and to grieve these trees,” exclaimed Hillary Gonzalez, of Sacred Parks and Waterways, alleging that Johns Hopkins security personnel threatened at one point to call police to clear onlookers from the sidewalk on the west side of Remington Avenue.

“We weren’t in the way. We were just watching. It was like an attempt to intimidate us,” she said.

While some residents embraced and one bystander shook her fist and called out, “Don’t do this,” many simply filmed the action with their phones. A woman, with her 17-month old son in a stroller, said that even though she knew this day was coming, it was still horrible to see.

“I am really concerned about the health and safety of my family,” said Michele Levy, who has lived across the street for 12 years, citing the dust, the construction traffic and the vibrations.

Since the project was announced in 2023, Hopkins has met with the community over the project. But residents have become increasingly embittered about what they say are refusals by the university – and the city – to be fully transparent and provide them with key documents they need to understand its scope and legal basis.

The 50-plus-year-old red oaks, which university officials initially said would be left alone, have been a flashpoint for the community.

“We all loved these trees,” Levy sighed. “I’m just so disheartened that Hopkins is putting up buildings of this size in a residential neighborhood.”

She gestured toward her neighborhood’s new landscape for the next four years.

Chain-link fences went up on Monday on Remington Avenue, closing off the northbound travel lane and sidewalk for the tree removal. Fencing now shuts Wyman Park Drive to vehicle traffic between Remington Avenue and San Martin Drive, leaving a sidewalk beside the child care center for pedestrians.

“Suddenly over the last 72 hours, we’ve got these fences and this police presence,” Levy said, pointing to university and city police cars parked near the tree-cutting and what looked to be a police security camera on a pole at the end of the block.

Years of Conflict

Disputing Gonzalez’ description of the sidewalk interaction, Hopkins spokesman Doug Donovan said today that “no one on the sidewalk across the street from the work zone was asked to move at any point.”

“Over the course of the day, a few pedestrians were advised to move further away from the active work zone fences or to not stand in traffic on the street for their own safety,” he wrote.

On a related issue, Donovan had no comment on Remington resident Joan Floyd’s formal complaint and video alleging that JHU police officers parked on Remington Avenue were outside their jurisdictional boundaries. He noted this in an email:

“The Homewood Campus is defined in the statute as: ‘The area bounded by West University Parkway and East University Parkway on the north, East 28th Street and West 28th Street on the south and Remington Avenue and Stony Run stream on the west and North Calvert Street on the East. The JHPD campus area jurisdiction may include a street, sidewalk, or parking facility, immediately adjacent to the campus.”

According to Floyd, the Hopkins spokesman “left out the part where the State law defines JHU Police jurisdiction as being over only the property within those outer boundaries that is ‘owned, leased, operated or controlled’ by JHU and is used for institutional purposes as well as the immediately adjacent sidewalk, street or other thoroughfare.”

Hopkins’ creation of its own police force has been another source of friction with the community (as well as with some students and faculty) spawning litigation and protests held as recently as last month.

Regardless of boundary lines, resident Aly Lynch said the area now has a “surveillance state” vibe that aligns with the stated purpose of DSAI to make Hopkins a hub for research in artificial intelligence and data science.

“This may not be a data center exactly, but it’s going to be worse. They’re going to train the next generation to develop these data centers that people are opposing all over the country,” said Lynch, who moved to Annapolis but previously lived on Remington Avenue.

Pacing back and forth in the street and facing the tree removal crews, Lynch clutched a copy of the Wendell Berry poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” and recited it.

“Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias,” it reads in part.

Zoe Gensheimer, urban forester for the Recreation and Parks Department, approached Lynch at one point and embraced her, then walked off to get a closer look at the cutting.

Residents’ comments today on an email chain that includes Hopkins and city leaders were less formally poetic.

Hopkins “is a pizza burn on the roof of this city’s mouth,“ one wrote, accusing the school of “bullying and intimidating the neighborhood.”

“Any goodwill we may have had towards JHU was destroyed today with the trees,” Gonzalez wrote, faulting the university for refusing to inform residents about the timeline for the tree removal.

Community Seeks an MOU

Asked to comment on the reaction to yesterday’s tree removal, Donovan reiterated Hopkins’ promise “to be a good neighbor” as it creates an interdisciplinary research center that will generate thousands of jobs during the years-long construction phase.

The bad blood between the community and university was evident when Hopkins representatives came to City Hall last month seeking permission to make stormwater improvements along Wyman Park Drive – infrastructure work they said would require cutting down the trees.

Despite heated testimony from residents opposing the permit, the Board of Estimates, led by City Council President Zeke Cohen, unanimously approved the request.

JHU representatives made numerous promises about restoring the tree canopy and monitoring vibration impacts on homes, together with providing free shuttles for construction workers to keep them from parking in the neighborhood.

According to the Community Law Center, Hopkins has shut out the community by withholding key project information.

These promises don’t have the force of law and aren’t recorded by the BOE as transcripts, Amy Petkovsek, executive director of the Community Law Center, pointed out yesterday in her cease-and-desist letter sent to Hopkins’ attorney, Caroline L. Hecker.

The Community Law Center is representing Sacred Parks and Waterways (SPAW), the new name for the neighborhood’s DSAI opposition group.

“As a followup to that Board of Estimates meeting, we were hoping we could meet with the team at Hopkins, with our clients,” Petkovsek said in interview with The Brew.

“We could formalize some of the things that Hopkins said – tree-planting and so many other things – with a Memorandum of Understanding similar to how it’s done at the Liquor Board between communities and licensees,” she explained.

Information Withheld

As CLC’s Petkovsek describes it, Hopkins has shut out the community by withholding key project information.

“If they had responded to us, I wouldn’t be reaching out to the media and writing this letter,” she said.

“Our clients are feeling like they’ve not been able to be a meaningful part of an action that’s really going to change the nature of their community. They need real details to understand the impacts of the tree loss, the effects on the environment, the effects of a long-term, data-research-based construction project.”

She described the developer’s agreement presented at the BOE meeting as “boilerplate,” and said the actual detailed information on the scope of the project is described “on file with the Department of Transportation.”

Unable to obtain that document from the city or attorney Hecker, the community has filed a Public Information Act request, she said.

In seeking another document, the right-of-way permit for the Remington Avenue tree cutting, CLC got no reply from Hecker and were refused access by DOT officials, who said a formal PIA request must be filed.

Petkovsek said residents were only alerted to the document’s existence by signs posted a few days ago.

“JHU has treated its neighbors as adversaries and has kept them in the dark”  – Amy Petkovsek, Community Law Center.

Without full public disclosure, Petkovsek argued in her letter, Hopkins must not proceed with the work because “the legitimacy of JHU’s work on the public right of way is unclear.”

Hopkins did not reply to the letter, she said, and went ahead with the tree cutting.

Asked by The Brew to respond to the points raised by Petkovsek, a Hopkins spokesperson provided no comment.

According to Petkovsek, “JHU has treated its neighbors as adversaries and has kept them in the dark, even in matters respecting the common use of public property such as the right of way on Remington Avenue.”

She urged university leadership to do better, saying, “SPAW welcomes JHU’s development of its campus in its proper role as an engaged community institution. However, if you continue to persist with unauthorized work in the public right of way, we will be forced to take appropriate legal action.”