Manuka plane tree removed for Sotiria Liangis Franklin St hotel development

But it is rare for the removal of a tree - a single tree - to cause a palpable sigh of relief for an entire community.

The chopping down of the 18-metre plane tree in Manuka's Franklin Street - planted some time in the 1970s in a former easement between what was the Capitol Theatre and the post office - to make way for a hotel development is the last chapter of a painfully drawn-out stoush, which even included accusations of sabotage when the tree's leaves began turning brown out of season.

But it can also be seen as the start of a new chapter for Manuka, a precinct that has been at the centre, inadvertently, of various development-related travails in recent years.

While the central shopping centre has continued to thrive, with vibrant arcades and a green central cafe strip, the satellite developments, including the Manuka Plaza on Flinders Way, have not fared so well.

When prominent businesswoman Sotiria Liangis, whose Liangis Investments already owns the cinema on the proposed hotel site, first applied to the Conservator of Flora and Fauna to cancel the registration of the tree that was hampering development at 15 Franklin Street, she couldn't have foreseen the months and years of administrative headaches that lay ahead.

The tree went on to be the subject of three different matters heard at the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal, hampering her plans to develop the site since 2015.

Many in the Canberra community might instinctively baulk at the notion of a tree being removed simply for the sake of commercial development.

But those whose livelihoods might well depend on a neighbourhood revitalisation are understandably hopeful that years of stagnation could soon be reversed.

And as the tree finally came down last week, restaurant owner Josh Kosteski said those who had once opposed its removal might soon see the possibilities for revitalisation.

"If you go back 10 years, you could not get a car spot anywhere within a kilometre of Manuka or a dinner reservation anywhere on the strip. ... That sort of tapered off and died down and that's what we want to get it back to," he told The Canberra Times.

Another business owner pointed out that while trees, in general, were important in older areas like Manuka, good design and thriving businesses were just as vital.

Now that the tree is gone - a situation that cannot be reversed - there is an opportunity to unlock the potential of Manuka that developers have until now struggled to realise, through combination of economic reality and bad planning.

Planning for the suburb has not always been done properly; one only needs to observe the empty shopfronts and desultory atmosphere of the failed Manuka Plaza.

A new hotel on the site of the ailing cinema and the two struggling sites at either end will be an opportunity to do things right. No one knows this better than those who have been running businesses in the midst of a suburb whose fortunes wax and wane. If a single tree needed to be sacrificed so that Manuka may thrive again, this does not spell the end of Canberra's dedication to its significant urban forests. It is simply a case of a tree making way for practicality in the real world.