Mark Elphick couldn’t put his finger on just what it was that attracted him to the block where he bought his house in Caldwell 28 years ago. Until it was gone.
“There was something about it,” Elphick, a 61-year-old marketing executive, said of his once-verdant stretch of Central Place. “I didn’t know what it was. Then they cut down the trees and I knew what it was.”
Elphick said it was mostly mature oak trees that lined both sides of the block, before they were cut down about five years ago to make way for new Belgian block curbs, a repaving of the street, and new concrete sidewalks, after roots of the trees had cracked utility lines and buckled the old sidewalks. He added that two large trees on the block fell on houses during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and that the removal later on may have been for the best.
For better or worse, residents of Florence Place, about a mile away, are worried that the two dozen century-old sycamore trees on their short street will be next.
They say the borough plans to cut down the sturdy sycamores that have lined the block since long before they moved in, as part of a plan to likewise install granite curbing, repave the roadway, and pour new sidewalks, after similar damage was done to their sidewalks and utility lines by the trees’ spreading roots.
JoAnn Siebelist, 79, a retired infectious diseases researcher who has lived on Florence Place for 54 years, has seen what’s happened to Central Place and other Caldwell streets where the roots of once-welcome shade trees have outgrown the mile-square Essex County borough of about 9,300 residents.
“It’s been an ongoing program throughout the town for quite a few years now,” said Siebelist, who has researched the benefits of mature shade trees in terms of improving air quality, moderating storm water runoff, keeping temperatures in their immediately area cooler, and others.
“It’s not like I’m a tree hugger or a super environmentalist,” said Siebelist. “But I’ve been outraged by this.”
One of the century-old sycamore trees on Florence Street in Caldwell uprooted this sidewalk slap. Caldwell officials have said this is the kind of dangerous condition the borough’s mature shade trees can create, in addition to potentially damaging utility lines.Steve Strunsky | NJ.com
A request for bids on the project dated Oct. 16, 2025, states the nature and scope of the project, icluding the trees’ removal.
“The work consists of the reconstruction of Florence Place —600 ft length of existing roadway— including full depth roadway, curb, sidewalk, curb ramp, and driveway apron reconstruction, the removal and replacements of all street trees, and repairs and upgrades to the existing sanitary and storm sewer structure within the limits of the roadway,” the request states.
Siebelist and her neighbors say the PSE&G crew that’s been digging up Francis Place this week for gas line work is a precursor to the tree-cutting and repaving, an assertion confirmed by PS&G workers and local police keeping the block closed off, though not by local officials.
A PSE&G spokesman later said the utility was not involved in the tree-cutting matter, either in terms of the decision-making process or the removal of any trees.
Borough Administrator Alex Palumbo said he wasn’t aware that any residents had complained about the situation and he declined to talk to NJ.com about any concerns without talking to the residents first.
“This is just a standard typical roadway reconstruction project, this is what we do,” said Palumbo.
Mayor Garrett Jones, who’s running for re-election this year, did not respond to requests for comment.
Councilman Ken Jurgensen, a Democrat who hopes to challenge Jones for mayor in the November general election, provided a copy of a note he emailed to an unidentified Florence Place resident on March 18, 2025, after the resident had contacted him upon learning of that trees could be removed.
“Before the actual work begins, EACH tree between the curb and the sidewalk, is individually assessed,” Jorgensen informed the resident. “These trees are actually ‘owned’ by the borough, and so one by one they will have an arborist determine the health of the tree, determine if it has any disease, and if it’s lifting up the existing sidewalk because it has become so large, and if power lines are above it.
“If it is diseased, lifting up sidewalk, has power lines above it or it’s half dead, they may decide to have it removed. This has been the general trend in Caldwell as our large old trees ‘age out’ or become so large that they become dangerous.”
Jurgensen declined to comment apart from sending NJ.com a copy of the email.
Cameron Macchia lives two doors down from Sievelist in the house where he grew up, which has one of the thickest sycamores on Florence Place, located by the curb in front of his home.
“I have pictures of me by that tree my whole life,” said Macchia, 25, a contractor who was doing some roof work on his house on a sunny morning this week.
Macchia wondered why some of the surface roots could not be cut back, or the sidewalk reconfigured around the roots.
But Mark Elphick, the Central Place resident who lamented the loss of his block’s shady elms, said two large trees were blown down in a storm after their roots had been trimmed to make room for a street widening years ago.
The leaves on the sycamores hadn’t fully sprouted when NJ.com visited Florence Place this week, and didn’t offer the full canopy effect.
But the twin rows of thick, light-colored trunks and gnarled limbs lining either side of the block at regular intervals lent the otherwise unremarkable stretch of suburbia a distinctly inviting quality.
“I have company, and every time we turn the corner onto my street they tell me how beautiful the trees are,” Siebelist said.
Ridding Florence Place of its defining sycamores would be like déjà vu, Siebelist said, after two of them were taken down about 10 years ago, one right in front of her house and the other next door. It was after her neighbor determined that the tree’s roots had broken a water pipe and flooded his basement.
Siebelist said the arborist knocked on her door and told her he’d be taking her tree the next day because of a crack discovered in its trunk, a fault that Sievelist said won’t usually kill a sycamore, though in this case it did prove fatal.
She said she tried calling borough hall that afternoon but got no response, and the next morning her tree was gone. Since then, she said, “The temperature in my house has increased in the summertime due to lack of shade.”
Steve Stern lives just across the street. Stern, a 79-year-old retired marketing professional, moved onto Florence Place with his wife 20 years ago for the same reason Elphick was unconsciously drawn to his place on Central.
“One of the reasons that my wife and I decided to move here was the beautiful 100-plus-year-old sycamore trees on our block,” Stern told NJ.com. “When in full bloom, these magnificent creations form an enchanting canopy over the street.”
Caldwell resident Mark Elphick took this photo of a house on his block, where a shade tree fell on a house during Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. Other trees on the block were later removed.Mark Elphick
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