After more than 19,000 signatures to an online petition and pushback from the community, Alexander &Baldwin announced Friday it would retain all 17 monkeypod trees at Manoa Marketplace. One, however, will have to be relocated.

A&B, which owns the property, said it would repave the center’s parking lot to address safety concerns while installing new planters or expanding existing ones around most of the monkeypods to contain further growth of their roots.

“We’re a local company and we take our commitment to our local communities very seriously,” said Chris Benjamin, A&B president and CEO, in a press release. “It is important to us to balance preserving the character of Manoa Marketplace and addressing these safety concerns.”

Since October, A&B said it has been meeting with members of the community to discuss changes to Manoa Marketplace and address complaints the company had received about the safety of its parking lot.

Originally, A&B had planned to remove seven trees and relocate two because their roots were breaking up the asphalt in the center’s parking lot, creating what it said was a safety hazard. The roots, painted yellow, are visible in the parking lot between Safeway and Longs Drugs.

Manoa Alliance launched the change.org petition on Jan. 1, asking to save the nine monkeypod trees at the shopping center, and received more than 10,000 signatures within the first week. As of 11 a.m. Friday the petition had 19,435 signatures.

“The people spoke, and A&B deserves our admiration for listening,” said Manoa resident Nancie Caraway. “I am so grateful to A&B for living up to their rich legacy of respecting community enrichment. This means that they’re going to be a wonderful neighbor in a very cherished, historical green valley.”

Neil Bond, founder of the Manoa Alliance, was also pleased with the news. The alliance had wanted to preserve all the trees because they were healthy and, in its view, presented no danger. Saving the trees was more a matter of policy, according to the alliance, while figuring out the problem was “strictly a mechanical, engineering question.”

Bond said he wanted to express his deepest appreciation to Benjamin and the Manoa Marketplace project team for genuinely listening to the community and finding a way to preserve “these beautiful shade trees while creating a parking lot that’s safe and comfortable for everyone.”

In addition to the petition by the Manoa Alliance, other members of the community mobilized.

The board of Malama Manoa, a nonprofit with about 3,700 members, voted unanimously earlier this month to preserve the monkeypod trees.

Steve Mechler, president of Outdoor Circle, also met with A&B to present alternatives to removing the monkeypods. He suggested removing the asphalt around the tree roots and creating a green belt, while relocating those parking stalls to a largely unused space on the eastern side of Longs.

A green belt would help return water to the ground, said Mechler, a well-known landscape architect, and could potentially become a gathering place beneath the canopy of the trees.

One monkeypod tree will have to be relocated, said A&B, to a spot alongside Manoa Stream at the border of the parking lot because its roots are blocking the primary drain that collects water runoff. A&B also will need to trim and prune the tree canopies to ensure that they remain stable with their roots contained within planters.

Caraway was sad for that one tree, she said, because it’s like an ohana “being deprived of one of its members.”

Still, she is pleased that the trees will be saved and sees the resolution as an example of how a community can work together.

“Our passion for enhancing the valley is deep and profound, so they got that, which is really important,” she said. “I’m just really overjoyed and surprised, but very proud of A&B for doing the right thing.”

A&B, which acquired Manoa Marketplace in 2016, said the parking lot improvements are part of an ongoing effort to address deferred maintenance issues. It will also be upgrading the air conditioning systems this year to improve performance and energy efficiency, and making extensive roof repairs.

A&B will also offer an update at the Manoa Neighborhood Board meeting Feb. 7.