Stratacell enables green overhaul of Main Street, Las Vegas
In 2015, the City of Las Vegas led a major overhaul of its downtown streetscapes, with the objective of making them more comfortable, enjoyable, and safer for pedestrians and bike riders. A comprehensive project with multiple contributors, landscape design was completed by Alta Planning + Design, engineering by CA Group, and installation by Dynascape Landscaping.
Program Manager at the City of Las Vegas, Jeremy Leavitt, said, “Main Street is a major pedestrian and biking precinct in downtown Las Vegas. A complete streetscape overhaul was planned, including widening the curb and gutter into the street, repaving, putting in storm water drains, and also new street lights, trees, and benches for people to enjoy.”
“The challenge we faced was that this is a very old area of Las Vegas, with lots of old utilities. In one area, there was a particularly significant energy duct bank underground. Given its size, age, and the fact that many of the surrounding casinos rely on it, we didn’t want to move it – but we also wanted to plant trees above it.”
“Realizing we needed a solution to protect the surrounding utilities and provide enough room for the new trees to grow, we came across Citygreen’s Stratacell solution. We used these Stratacells around this energy duct bank, planting twenty Chinese Pistachios (Pistachia X ‘Red Push’) in the cells.”
“One year down the track, these trees are doing really well and have outgrown nearby trees which were not planted using Stratacell.”
Steven Glimp, Urban Forester at the City of Las Vegas, said, “The average diameter at breast height for the trees planted in Stratacells is 0.5 – 0.75 inches larger and they also average about 4 – 6 inches taller. This is outstanding given the relatively short time they have been in the ground and the mostly slow growth rate typical of Pistachia X ‘Red Push.’ From here, we can probably expect them to outperform their counterparts without soil cells exponentially.”
Jeremy Leavitt added, “Citygreen were fantastic to work with, and collaborated with the contractor to ensure they knew how to properly use and install the product. They even came out to site a few times during construction to give face-to-face assistance.”
“After seeing the Stratacells in action, we would definitely use them again and recommend them to anyone wanting to grow trees in congested urban areas. This is an innovative product that gives trees the underground space they need to grow, whilst preventing the expensive relocation of utilities.”
2023 Update
Our team visited the site in late 2023 and were thoroughly impressed with the growth these trees have enjoyed in such a harsh climate & hardscape.
