Lorenz wins back tree planting contract denied in 2022
Giving up on doing its own planting, the city leans on a sometimes controversial contractor to furnish trees and shrubs for parks and streets
Above: Volunteers at work for the Baltimore Tree Trust in 2022. (BTT)
Lorenz Lawn and Landscape will extend its near hammerlock on grass mowing and median strip maintenance with the scheduled approval tomorrow of a $2.6 million tree planting award by the Board of Estimates.
The Halthorpe-based company will furnish some 6,000 saplings and shrubs of different dimensions over the next two years, according to board documents, which translates to about $430 per tree.
It will also be responsible for maintaining the new foliage, replacing dead or damaged trees at its own expense through January 2027.
The contract calls for a multitude of young trees and bushes spread across parks and neighborhoods, including maples, oaks, elm, crabapple, linden, magnolia and redbuds.
The importance of trees goes beyond aesthetics – a 2018 study showed that residents living along mostly treeless streets in East Baltimore experienced 8 degree higher temperatures on hot summer days than in Dickeyville near Leakin Park.
Urban heat island assessment of Baltimore on August 29, 2018 by researchers. (cnsmaryland.org)
The arrangement will add to Lorenz’s portfolio of grass cutting and landscaping contracts – Recreation and Parks, DOT and other city agencies do little of their own mowing and maintenance.
Lorenz has won $28.6 million for grass mowing and landscaping at Druid Hill, Patterson and other parks as well as along public rights-of-way, BOE records show.
Several of the awards were controversial, such as when former Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young withheld $4.7 million of planting and mowing contracts in 2020, saying city agencies should do such work in-house and develop career pathways for young people.
Parks Director William Vondrasek was later removed when, faced with hundreds of acres of uncut high grass, approved unbudgeted funds so that Lorenz would resume mowing.
Tomorrow’s expected award comes after a nonprofit rival, Baltimore Tree Trust, snatched the last big planting award from Lorenz, only to fail to deliver the promised trees.
The $2,636,220 contract with Lorenz was piggybacked onto a Rockville, MD., contract to save time, city officials say. (Comptroller’s Office)
In order to start planting this spring, the Scott administration agreed to sidestep competitive bidding and pay the same per-unit tree and shrub prices that Lorenz struck with Rockville, Maryland.
Such a cooperative purchasing agreement is permitted as long as “there is no advantage in seeking competitive responses.”
Adam Manne, the city purchasing agent, vouched that Lorenz won the contract competitively in Rockville and has the capability to perform the work. What’s more, “time is of the essence in the performance of this contract,” Manne wrote.
A waiver suspending MBE/WBE requirements was appended to the new contract.
“He’s ready to go and make sure things get planted on time,” Robert Dashiell, attorney for owner Joe Lorenz, said today.
Hundreds of mature trees die yearly along Baltimore streets. Last September, a crew building a walkway across the 39th Street median near University Parkway cut the roots and otherwise damaged several mature American elms and zelkovas. (Both: Mark Reutter)
Broken Contract
In 2021, the Baltimore Tree Trust loudly protested the tree planting award to Lorenz, saying its bid was 69% lower but was unfairly passed over due to a minor technicality.
The Board of Estimates scheduled a new vote and eventually gave the contract to the nonprofit. A year later, after planting only 486 trees, BTT called it quits.
“We just weren’t getting paid on time,” says CEO Bryant Smith, who cited problems with the Workday software billing system.
“We didn’t leave them high and dry,” he continued. “We went to Recreation and Parks, contacted Comptroller [Bill] Henry and gracefully bowed out in a way that we could continue to work on other urban forestry projects.”
Smith said the group signed an MOU with Recreation and Parks to service the trees before the contract was formally withdrawn last fall.
Since its founding in 2008, BTT says it has planted nearly 17,000 trees, mainly in low-income neighborhoods, relying heavily on volunteers.
Last March, it received a $2 million grant from MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire ex-wife of Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos, who praised the organization for its “singular vision that all Baltimore neighbors deserve access to the clean air and cool green spaces that trees can provide.”