For several decades, the W.R. Irving Children’s Center, home of the Ingleside Methodist Church daycare and fellowship hall, was flanked by two large live oak trees in the Capital Heights neighborhood in Baton Rouge. On Aug. 7, Capital Heights homeowners woke up to see the trees roped off.
Amelia Gilmore, a licensed arborist who has lived beside the church since 2012, said she thought the caution tape meant that the trees were to be saved. Instead, she said her neighbor, Nicole Cotten Callac, informed her that the trees were going to be cut down.
As an employee of Baton Rouge Green, Gilmore asked one of her coworkers to check if the trees were on city property or church property. Baton Rouge Green confirmed that the trees were on Ingleside’s private property, Gilmore said.
The church could do with them what they wanted.
Church property
Ingleside started as the East Baton Rouge Methodist Church on March 10, 1946, with 77 charter members meeting at Bernard Terrace School. It later purchased the property at 4264 Capital Heights Ave., and in 1968, the church was renamed Ingleside United Methodist Church…