I know everyone loves these threads, so I was wondering what you all thought of my situation:

I want to plant a row of small trees along the front of my store. Here are the issues I am facing:

1. The space I plan on placing these trees is between the sidewalk and the building, about 12' wide. The surface is actually some kind of crushed/recycled asphalt a construction crew dumped on when they were fixing the sidewalks. I know the soil underneath this is terrible, so I planned on planting the trees in large containers, made of either stacked landscape timbers or stone/concrete.

2. The trees would be along the north side, they get about 5-8 hours of sun a day.

3. They would be exposed to a good steady wind, usually a west to east. There is also a fair amount of road runoff; salt, excess snow, etc.

So far I have come up with a few options:

Crabapple; the size is manageable, and most varieties sold around here would be OK with these tougher conditions.

Hawthorn: see above

Locust: I don't like locusts, they are a plague in this area.

My questions: Is it possible to have these trees survive and thrive in this environment? Any other choices for trees, or larger shrubs for that matter?