By Eric Curl
Sept. 13, 2026 – The city of Savannah recently issued a solicitation for contractors to mitigate damage to nine live oaks around historic Grayson Stadium at Daffin Park.
Officials say the damage was caused by unpermitted grading and construction activity by the Savannah Bananas around the stadium early this year, according to correspondence and documents obtained by Savannah Agenda through an open-records request.
Bananas officials dispute the claim, saying they received the go-ahead from city officials to make what they characterized as long needed maintenance improvements to the parking area and deny they are to blame for any damage to the live oaks.
This past spring the city installed bollards around the trees to keep vehicles away and limit future disturbance, after concluding that the grading had damaged the trees’ root systems — despite calls by Bananas leadership to postpone the creation of the tree protection zones until the resulting lost parking could be replaced.
During an interview with Savannah Agenda on Sept. 4, Bananas President Jared Orton questioned the timing of the endeavor.
“So, we were told that they were going to come in here and create these barriers for parking to ensure that people don’t park near the trees,” Orton said. “If that was the issue, that should have been done 25 years ago. I’m not sure how we somehow instigated that now this has to be done.”
Savannah Agenda requested comment from the city’s Office of Marketing and Communications on three occasions since the request for bids was issued. The city did not respond.
A “highly distressing issue”
The alleged damage was discovered as the Bananas were completing a new locker room and training facility behind the stadium, according to city officials. Urban Forestry Director Scott DeArmey informed Ret Weeks, the Bananas director of capital projects, on Feb. 9 that the grading “caused significant root damage to the live oaks along the road” and that the city would begin developing a mitigation plan to try to give the trees “a chance at survival.”
“For there to be no type of tree protection on a project such as this is simply something that is not allowed,” DeArmey said.
Senior Park and Tree Director Gordon Denney followed up with a separate email advising City Manager Jay Melder of the damage to the live oaks “due to construction being done by the Savannah Bananas.” Denney said the Bananas had a permit for the training facility project, including some utility work, but that the work being completed behind the stadium was “well outside of the approved limits of disturbance.”
By the time Urban Forestry became aware of the work, the contractors had already impacted the root systems of the trees, “most of them significantly … ” Denney said. “While compaction and poor growing issues were present prior to any recent root damage, the damage that has occurred may very well be the difference in these trees surviving in a challenging environment as they have done for years and not surviving at all.”
DeArmey also wrote that the work “in any other case would result in a complete stop work order,” but city staff agreed to let it continue so as not to hold up the Bananas’ opening day because most of the damage had already occurred.
Melder then emailed Bananas President Jared Orton about what he described as the “highly distressing issue caused by construction at the Stadium.”
“As I know you must be aware, mature live oaks are protected in city ordinance, and beloved by the community,” Melder said in the Feb. 13 email. “Any loss or damage to these trees would be a terrible loss and will cause considerable outrage from the community — especially if the damage was caused by unpermitted construction activity at a city park.”
Melder said the city would await remediation recommendations from arborists and that, in the meantime, they need to ensure all construction work is well within the permitted scope as well as determine what and if any work was done outside the permitted scope.
“I’m communicating directly with you because I want to emphasize the seriousness of this issue,” Melder said. “I expect much work will need to be done to remediate the issue.”
Going the “extra mile”
The Bananas dispute the city’s characterization. Orton and Weeks told Savannah Agenda during the Sept. 4 interview that the area around the stadium had long suffered from poor drainage, mud and soil compaction caused by years of parking.
“There’s been times here for so many years where people have parked underneath all these trees, big summer downpour and it is just a mud bog pit,” Orton said. “We have literally pushed cars out of the mud to get them out of these parking lots.”
As part of the new training facility and locker room project, Weeks said they constructed an underground drainage system, rather than a retention pond, as typically required for a project of its size, since the pond would have taken up more parking.
“There’s no stormwater infrastructure, and so for eons, all the water’s just been going to the lowest places,” he said.
Weeks said the Bananas discussed grading and restoring the gravel roads with development services during an inspection in mid-January and understood that city staff had approved the work as “maintenance.” Orton said the organization spent about $160,000 cleaning up the area and restoring the gravel drives to their previous condition.
“We were going to go a little bit further or more the extra mile of restoring the conditions out here back to better than what we found them,” Weeks said. “And no one had an issue with it then, so we moved forward with it.”
Parking spaces versus tree preservation
Meanwhile, correspondence obtained from the city shows that the Bananas were pressing the city over the loss of parking that would result from the city’s proposed tree preservation plan, which included installing the bollards, removing the recently added gravel, loosening compacted soil and adding mulch. Weeks counted 125 vehicles parked within the proposed tree-protection areas, while Neil Trumler, Bananas director of stadium operations, warned that losing 75 to 100 spaces near the stadium would create a “huge friction point” for them. Both Weeks and Trumler proposed delaying the tree-protection project until replacement parking could be identified.
Savannah COO Saesha Carlile responded that she understood the preservation work poses a challenge to the team’s parking management but said that Daffin Park was not built to accommodate anywhere near the 1,500 cars the team indicated was the ideal planning target. The city was committed to continuing the dialogue to see what can be done, but they would be moving forward with the tree protection work, Carlile said.
The city “must begin the work prior to the onset of consistent summer temperatures due to the fertilization needs of the trees,” she said. “We cannot risk the further health of the treescape.”
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Savannah Alderman Nick Palumbo, who represents the area, said he had not been aware of the tree-damage issue before Savannah Agenda brought it to his attention on Sept. 4 and said he planned to seek more information from city staff. While he stopped short of assigning blame, he said the larger responsibility is to protect Daffin Park and its historic trees.
“The Bananas, just like all of us, have a responsibility to the park, and we are just stewards in history of maintaining this very beloved place,” Palumbo said. “And I hope that they see within themselves to help us take care of the trees that we love so much.”
The responses to the city’s request for bids for the tree preservation work are due Tuesday. Whether the tree-preservation contract requires Savannah City Council approval will depend on the winning bid. The city manager may approve contracts of $50,000 or less, while contracts exceeding $50,000 require authorization from the council, according to the procurement ordinance. City staff previously estimated the preservation work at about $25,000 to $30,000.
History of Daffin Park
Daffin Park’s live oaks have been part of the landscape for more than a century. The park, designed by landscape architect John Nolen in 1907, was placed under the management of Savannah’s Park and Tree Commission, then led by Philip D. Daffin, for whom the park was named. In 1908, 156 live oaks were transported from Ossabaw Island by tug and lighter and planted along the park’s central mall; additional live oaks were planted in 1910 and 1916. The city’s official history also documents a longstanding conflict between parking and tree preservation: by 1993, years of parking inside the mall had caused extensive tree damage, prompting residents to successfully push the city to prohibit parking in that area. Source: City of Savannah / Daffin Park Centennial Committee publication “Daffin Park: The First One Hundred Years” (2007)
History of the Savannah Bananas
The Savannah Bananas have called Grayson Stadium home since 2016, after the Savannah Sand Gnats left the city following the 2015 season and the city council approved an agreement with Fans First Entertainment to operate the historic ballpark. The Bananas debuted as a summer collegiate team in the Coastal Plain League, selling out opening night and nearly every home game during their first season, and went on to win three league championships. In 2022, the organization left the Coastal Plain League to focus full time on its entertainment-driven Banana Ball format, which has since expanded nationally while Grayson Stadium remains the team’s home base. The city and Fans First have repeatedly extended and amended their lease over the years, with the organization funding or helping fund stadium improvements, including a VIP facility, field and lighting upgrades and, most recently, a new locker room and training facility behind the stadium.
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