The Adelaide City Council says it will investigate whether a botched renovation job caused the death of one of Chesser Street’s iconic, 50-year-old grapevines.

The popular lane, used by hundreds of city workers to walk through each week, was home to Adelaide cultural institution Chesser Cellars until 2012, and features several large and much-loved grapevines.

“We’re not 100 per cent sure whether it’s been poisoned,” said the council’s infrastructure manager, Phillip Burton.

“We haven’t determined the cause of death.

“We don’t have any idea at the moment.”

Traders along the street say the vine died immediately after some of its roots were cut away and it was heavily pruned during a renovation to the front a building now occupied by Brown Falconer Architects.

But Brown Falconer says the grapevine was already dead before any renovations began.

Burton told InDaily: “One of our building and compliance officers will investigate as to whether those works actually impacted on the health of the vine”.

Anne Stropin has been running a photography studio in Chesser Street for 24 years.

“Everyone knows the street by the grapevines,” she said.

“After the (developers) did their work, we noticed that the vine was dying.

“I feel that the people that were doing the work didn’t take enough care of the vine when they were renovating the front of the building.”

She said she and other traders along the street were “all shocked” by the death of the vine, which is “extremely important to the street”.

“It’s a shame for Adelaide,” she said.

Another trader in Chesser Street, who did not want to be named, said he had seen workers removing part of the roots of the vine as part of the renovation.

“I saw the work being done on the particular day,” he said.

“Obviously it was affected when they did building work.

“The planter box was twice as high as it is now.

“We were greatly concerned about it … it’s just very iconic to the street.”

However, Brown Falconer Director Mario Dreosti said the renovation had no affect on the grapevine, which he said was already dead when the architecture firm took up residence in the building.

“That’s not correct,” he said.

“The vine had already died prior to us taking occupation of this building.

“We removed a number of vines that were growing on our building emanating from our own land … and people had not noticed that the (grapevine) had already died.

“We removed a number of vines off our own building that were growing on our own property, but they were not the ones that were growing over Chesser Street.”

The dead Chesser St vine.

Adelaide City Council removed half of the dead vine last week and will remove the rest of it over the weekend.

“We place the safety of the community as our highest priority, which is why the removal of the vine and subsequent assessment of the management of the structure thereafter is under way,” said Burton.

Dreosti said Brown Falconer was offering the council the use of its planter box for a new vine.

“We don’t have any concerns about health and safety, but we would like to see the street rejuvenated with the planting of new vines, and we’ve contacted council with the offer that we’d like to give them our planter box again to plant a new vine.”