The Wilmington Housing Authority is working with two firms, Urban Trends Real Estate Incorporated and TedC, to redevelop Hillcrest in four phases. Phase I will cost $25.7 million to build 84 affordable housing units for people 55 and older. The Endowment awarded the project $5.7 million for that first phase. Once the project is complete, it will include 550 homes on 26 acres.
A spokesperson for WHA says it is still proceeding with plans to cut down those six live oaks, but declined to say when construction on Phase I will start, despite multiple requests for that information.
However, in October 2025, WHQR reported that “construction for Phase I is set to begin in June of next year and is projected to finish in December of 2026. According to [WHA Executive Director Tyrone] Garrett, existing residents will be relocated during that time and will be able to return once the project is complete.”
Joshua Shields is a certified arborist — and worked in arboriculture for 26 years. He also served on the city’s tree commission.
WHQR went with him recently when Wilmington was experiencing a slew of ‘heat advisory’ days to look at ones slated for removal. The heat prompted one of the key reasons advocates argue for protecting urban tree canopies — shade.
“We're standing in the shade of this old tree, so I mean, it's 100 degrees out here. Feels like probably 104. And you feel a little bit of breeze standing in the shade. You can handle it, but if you get out from underneath these trees, it's scorching. It's just a concrete jungle, and it's just going to be even worse,” he said.
Shields at one point was standing in front of a 200-year-old live oak. It's one the developers are technically preserving, but Shields said the City’s Board of Adjustment will allow the developers to disturb the tree’s critical root zone.
“If you're going to impact it by more than 20% in the ordinance, you have to get a variance to do that. This tree is going to be impacted by like 60-something percent. So, even though it's being saved, its root system is going to be disturbed greatly, and it is somewhat likely that the tree will die because of the impacts from the development,” Shields said.
Isabelle Shepherd is the executive director for the Alliance of Cape Fear Trees. She said she hopes the developers will reconsider some of the trees slated for removal.
“We are not convinced that all six necessarily have to come down [...]. Based on the plans available to us, trees 10 and 13 appeared to be primarily impacted by the roadway alignment, and we wanted to know whether relatively modest adjustments had been fully explored that could save one or both of them,” she said, adding, “But I also don't want to pretend that we have all the information that the engineers and land planners have.”
Shepherd added that they sent a letter to WHA formalizing their concerns about the six live oaks, and they haven’t heard anything directly from them to date.
Sam Franck is the attorney from Ward & Smith who represented the developers in February to get the variance to cut down the six live oaks. He essentially argued that they had to come down because of roadways, utility lines, and other construction work.
“We can't use the existing water and sewer lines and electric lines that are in the ground. We've got to dig some new trenches. We can't rely on the existing road system where it is, and deliver anywhere close to the number of homes that we intend to deliver on an affordable basis. And therefore, we've got to cut new roads. We've got to cut new utility lines. There's going to be some impact through the construction process,” Franck said to the BOA.
He even at one point mentioned that they were being transparent about the trees, but added that “Duke Power doesn't have to come talk to you before they make a mess of a tree. That's not the way that the code works.”
Vice Chair of the Board of Adjustment, Patrick Moore, said during the February meeting, “I always think it's a shame to lose trees. I do feel like the applicant has put forth a significant amount of effort in obtaining and preserving the trees that can be saved.”
Moore stepped in to proceed with the meeting because Board of Adjustment Chair Jeff Hovis had to recuse himself because he is the chair of the WHA Board and the owner of Hillcrest.
BOA Member Troy Demers added, “I do believe the city's request to have any of the trees that are potentially being impacted to be bonded as well as working with the city's arborist would be an important factor in my decision.”
“Bonding the trees” means that if they die, the developers will pay a fee to the city.
A city spokesperson told WHQR, “The bond equals the mitigation amount for the four trees to be retained, totaling $60,900.”
Franck argued before the BOA that “the removal of these six specimen trees is indeed truly necessary to get this done, [but] please understand that the future landscaping plan contemplates not only saving several trees that are not specimen trees, but also planting a significant number of trees, 76 new trees to be exact, within the first phase of the development.”
Shepherd noted that these newly planted trees are not a replacement for these hundred-year-plus-old live oaks.
“If you remove a mature live oak and plant a young tree in its place, you've replaced the tree numerically, but you haven't replaced its ecological function. That takes decades,” she said.
Shepherd said she didn't know how many live oaks of this age and size are left in the area. However, the city did receive a $1.5 million grant to inventory Wilmington’s trees.
While another option for the trees could be relocation, the cost of doing that would be high, and there is no guarantee that they would survive. Tree advocates like Shields and Sheperd said it’s best to leave them where they are.
Back in 2017, the developers of the Publix parking lot saved the ‘Ogden’ live oak, which is over 200 years old, and it still stands today. Shields was a part of that successful relocation, which cost about $80,000.
“They now have this beautiful old piece of history in their parking lot,” he said.
Shepherd added about moving a tree that old, “It's an incredibly expensive, really large undertaking. I've only seen it [presented] at tree conferences.
WHQR contacted all of city council on this issue. Only member Cassidy Santaguida responded, writing that she’s in favor of sending a letter to WHA to say the city might not waive the tree mitigation fees for the project — and could reconsider using the variance to remove them.
Santaguida added she also wanted to hear more about WHA’s rationale for requesting the variance in February, “I’ve been informed that in their presentation of the Hillcrest project to council (before I joined), WHA indicated that they planned to preserve tree canopy. City staff met with representatives from the project team in January to discuss minimizing impacts to critical root zones; it’s unclear to me why WHA made the choice to continue to pursue a variance from BOA after this discussion.”
Shepherd, too, has advice for the developer’s future planning stages.
“This is only phase one of the Hillcrest redevelopment, which will be a much larger project. That means that the precedent and lessons from these trees matter beyond these six. So, we want tree preservation incorporated into phases two, three, and four from the earliest stages of design,” she said.
There is one thing that the developers, Santaguida, Shepherd, and Shields all agree on — the Hillcrest project will create much-needed housing for the community.
In terms of recent contentious debates over tree preservation, Shields said that, working as an arborist for over twenty years, he’s not naive about what the job entails, but said overall, he wishes the City of Wilmington and the developers of Hillcrest would not be so quick to remove the trees.
“I've cut down lots of trees in my lifetime. That was part of my job, and some of them really needed to be cut down, and some of them didn't,” he said. “Every tree has a potential to fail, so if you have zero threshold for risk, then you're going to cut down things that are not going to fall down most likely in a really long time. If there are ways to mitigate that, the arborist should be giving other options besides cutting it down.”
Shields said those options include pruning diseased branches or cabling and bracing of tree limbs. As far as the resources the City of Wilmington has to do this work, it has an arborist, an assistant arborist, and 11 staff in operations for tree preservation and removal.
Correction: Updated with the correct spelling of Isabelle Shepherd. The Ogden live oak was moved, not removed.
Resources
- View the documents and meeting for the Board of Adjustment’s ruling in favor of the variance on February 19, 2026
- 2025 Hillcrest Master Plan
