Bringing Trees Back to the City

CSX employees, joined by representatives from the City’s TreeBaltimore Program, Parks & People Foundation and the Westport Community, spent the morning of Saturday, October 10, planting 50 large Redbud, Maple and Sycamore trees throughout the Westport Neighborhood of Baltimore.

The Westport neighborhood is being redeveloped from an industrial area to a mixed-used community. Area leaders hope the environmental restoration will make the neighborhood a national model for urban revitalization.

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The railroad-sponsored event was part of the “Trees for Tracks” initiative that promises to plant 21,000 trees, or one tree for each mile of CSX track, in partnership with local organizations over the next five years. City Year and the Alliance for Community Trees were also instrumental in orchestrating the day’s planting. In addition to CSX employee and local volunteers, students from several colleges including the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Johns Hopkins University were in attendance.

Said Tori Kaplan, Director of Corporate Citizenship for CSX, “We appreciate the opportunity to bring Trees for Tracks to a Baltimore city neighborhood that has received national attention for reinventing itself in ways that improve the quality of life and benefit the environment.”

The 45-acre Westport neighborhood is being redeveloped from an industrial area to a mixed-used community. An estimated 37 percent of the area’s families live below the poverty line, but area leaders hope the environmental restoration will make the neighborhood a national model for urban revitalization.

Said Guy Hager, Senior Director for the Parks & People Foundation, “In communities with trees, people socialize more with their neighbors, have a stronger sense of community and pride in their neighborhood, and feel safer than people in communities without trees. We enjoyed being a part of this larger effort that CSX is undertaking, to bring trees back to our city.”