Yes, the Lorax would have been proud: The trees are going to be saved.

Everyone agreed — even if they were not totally confident.

The ultimate fate of three massive trees — an elm, sycamore and red oak — on the same property as the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum were the chief subject of discussion when museum staff and the project’s architect briefed the Design Review Board on the museum’s expansion plans this week.

The project is now in the very early stages, but ultimately museum officials are hoping to add onto the main building and extend the facility on both of its eastern and western ends.

At the close of Monday’s meeting, museum officials announced they were in the process of applying for several substantial grants and planning fundraising efforts to assist in covering the cost of the expansion.

An update on those efforts is expected when next they appear before the Design Review Board in November.

Architect Jim Cutler, of Bainbridge-based Cutler Anderson Architects, designers of the expansion, talked about the project and presented conceptual illustrations to the Design Review Board. But the subject of tree preservation quickly took center stage before a crowd of about 30, which spilled out of the board’s conference room meeting and into the council chamber.

He said placement of the expanded structures was being done with careful consideration for the three large trees on the property and their roots.

Cutler was met with immediate skepticism.

“I think you’re going to kill them anyway,” said Design Review Board Member Laurel Wilson. “Those trees are significantly larger than they’re drawn in the plan.”

“That’s not true,” replied Cutler, who explained his firm was working with respected local arborist Olaf Ribeiro, who was also in attendance Monday, to ensure the trees’ safety.

“It just depends how they go about the construction,” Ribeiro said. “I talked with Bruce [Anderson] and we figured out ways to not impact the soil, keep the trees healthy.”

“We’ve done our research on this,” Cutler agreed, detailing for the board the intended method of construction — an elaborate process that includes semi-elevated slabs, a potential irrigation system, and porous filler intended to better aerate the soil and tree roots.

Some, however, remained concerned.

Design Review Board Member Peter Perry said he’d recently watched workers at a nearby site on Ericksen Avenue NE, on the opposite side as the museum, destroy a large tree while putting down concrete.

“They really went straight through the roots of one of the big firs there,” he said.

Cutler said in situations such as the one at the museum site, a monetary fine, stipulated in the work contract, would be levied against the construction company should any prized tree not survive.

Unsatisfied, Wilson put in that no amount of financial damages would bring a very old tree back to life if it was killed by a careless construction crew.

But Cutler was confident.

“We have researched this kind of work,” he said. “It’s been about 30 years since I’ve lost an important tree.”

He added that design plans would include “lengthy specifications on tree protection” and “lengthy fines for damaged trees.”

Asked how significant the fine was, Cutler said the trees in question would be priced at $5,000 to $10,000 each.

“It doesn’t seem like enough,” Perry said, citing an instance in Australia he was familiar with where similarly prized trees were supposedly valued at more than $200,000 each.

“Maybe we’ll make it bigger,” Cutler agreed.

According to a narrative provided to city planning staff, the expansion includes “archival space, additional administrative space, gallery space and the return of the historical school house to a flexible meeting space rather than exhibit space.”

The historic schoolhouse part of the museum will not be changed, according to initial plans for the project, but the inside of the 111-year-old building would no longer be used for exhibits.

The old schoolhouse, known as the Island Center School, was built in 1908. It was moved from Strawberry Hill Park to its present location in Winslow in February 2004.

The more contemporary part of the museum complex would be expanded on the ends that face Ericksen Avenue to the east, and Bainbridge Performing Arts to the west. Existing decks that were constructed next to the historic schoolhouse would be removed, along with three parking spaces that are adjacent to the museum’s access to Ericksen Avenue.

Three gabled buildings, each under 2,500 square feet, would be linked by a flat-roofed “glass element,” which architects said would be “a quiet link between these more dominant visual elements.”

There was preliminary talk Monday of possibly extending only a portion of the roof of one such structure so as to better place signage that would be visible from Winslow Way, thus helping visitors who are walking downtown more easily locate the museum.

Cutler said the museum’s records clearly show the majority of their roughly 13,000 visitors a year are tourists and hoped the more obvious sign would drive up attendance, a desire echoed by museum officials.

“Compared to the other museums in the cultural corridor, it’s the lowest visitation, compared to [Kids Discovery Museum] and BIMA,” said the museum’s executive director Brianna Kosowitz.

“We’d like to see that growing,” Kosowitz said. “We took away the cost of admission in January and we’ve seen a significant increase in visitation since then. I think mostly because people on the street, the proprietors, are more inclined to push visitors our way, which is great. But now with increased visitation we’re so much more stressed with the limited space that we have.

“So this [expansion] is really something that we’re taking seriously,” she added.

The basement of the building would also be expanded under a portion of the area that will be developed with new construction.

Part of the new construction is planned for the east end of the property where the retort (the large, tunnel-like iron contraption once used to help preserve milled timber) is located. The retort would be relocated to a new location if expansion plans are ultimately approved.