At last week's meeting, Wilmington City Council members heard a presentation from Tyrone Garrett, Chief Executive Officer for the Wilmington Housing Authority, on the Hillcrest redevelopment project. Garrett and a team of developers are still requesting a waiver for tree mitigation fees for the elimination of several specimen trees. The city manager hasn’t granted that request. WHA has also announced that it will likely be Fall 2028 before tenants can move into the first units of Phase I redevelopment of Hillcrest. They initially targeted April 2028.
Mitigation fee waiver
The Hillcrest redevelopment will occur in four phases, with the first housing residents 55 years and older in 99 one-bedroom residences. The overall redevelopment will include 550 residences, with both market-rate and affordable units. There will be apartments, townhomes, a community center, daycare, and — hopefully, according to WHA attorney Sam Franck of Ward and Smith, P.A., commercial space along Dawson Street.
Franck asked that council waive the mitigation fee in connection with the trees “that we can't replant, that we don't have room to replant,” adding, “the city has historically honored that request in connection with affordable housing development, and I understand that there's reconsideration of that in connection with this one, and respect that is what it is.”
Wilmington Council member J.C. Lyle said she still believes that if developers aren’t going to save significant trees, mitigation fees are “appropriate, as assessing those fees follows the current standards in the city’s ordinance.” She added that this sets the tone for developers to do everything they can to preserve trees.
City manager Becky Hawke will decide whether to eventually waive the fees. Currently, she has not.
Related: Hillcrest redevelopment pushed back to 2027; City of Wilmington wants more tree preservation
Related: Tree advocates push back against Wilmington Housing Authority's plan to cut down six old live oaks
For now, WHA has sought a permit to remove five specimen trees; however, Franck now says they are trying to save one additional tree, known as ‘Tree 10.’
“The trunk of the tree is actually located just outside of Phase One and Phase Two, but much of the critical root zone is in Phase One. The reason we haven't sought a permit to remove it yet, even though the Board of Adjustment gave permission to do so, is because we're still trying to figure out a way to save it. And as of this moment, we have not sought the permit to cut it down,” he said.
And it’s not guaranteed that the trees that are slated to be saved will survive, as Franck said, “Every single specimen tree on this site has a critical root zone that is impacted. The overlap between the critical root zones for the trees and the existing infrastructure creates a bit of a conundrum.”
Since the housing was built in the 1940s, WHA has to remove things like asbestos insulation and lead pipes — so they will need to dig up most of the area for new infrastructure and construction.
Feedback
City councilmember Cassidy Santaguida asked Garrett what kinds of feedback he’s been hearing from tenants about the trees at Hillcrest.
Garrett had mentioned earlier that this is a RAD (rental assistance demonstration) project and they have to gather community feedback to receive that designation. Those comments could be a public record. However, Garrett said there was one tenant who gave feedback and that “Her opinion might not be shared with other individuals that might be in the room or watching from home, but her opinion was that many of the trees need to come down because they may fall on houses because they have long outlived their life expectancy because they're dead, and some of them have been cut and shaved.”
According to the developer’s submission on the status of the ten specimen trees at the Hillcrest Phase One location, only two of the ‘specimen’ trees were in ‘fair’ condition — the rest were in ‘good’ condition. As for the 11 'significant’ trees, only one was in ‘poor’ condition, a dogwood tree. The rest were in ‘fair’ or ‘good’ condition.
WHQR checked with WHA whether the RAD conversion community feedback is a public record and has not yet heard back.
Nonetheless, Garrett emphasized that WHA “recognizes the importance of mature trees and did not approach their removal casually.” He added later, “I am not here to dismiss any concerns about the trees. Those concerns are legitimate.”
Lyle agreed with the contention surrounding building affordable housing and tree preservation: “There is a perceived and perhaps actual tension between affordability and green space and preservation of trees, which is an unfortunate tension because the tenants who are going to be moving in here deserve nice trees.”
But some on the WHA board have different thoughts. Port City Daily reported that board member Liz Carbone said, “I lose sleep at night thinking about the fact that we might lose out on permanent, deeply affordable housing for people in our community who desperately need it over a tree, a singular tree, that is beautiful, don’t get me wrong.”
Some on city council, and in the community, say they do care about both affordable housing and tree preservation — and that's not a question of what to do with a single tree but with several of them slated for removal in the initial phase at Hillcrest. No one has debated scrapping the project altogether because of the tree removal issue.
During the November meeting, Lyle reiterated that the City of Wilmington and WHA are two separate authorities.
“The city has not invested in the project or has any kind of oversight of Wilmington Housing Authority, but we're partners,” she said.
However, Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo appoints all nine WHA board members who oversee Garrett and his staff.
Lyle asked the developers too if they could relocate any of the trees slated for removal. Richard Petersheim, the land planner and landscape architect for the Hillcrest redevelopment, responded, “We have not, for Phase One, looked at any of the candidates for relocation. I think it comes down to a cost perspective. And I think the candidates that we have selected, there's eight of them that we're saving for Phase One.”
Replacement tree options
Franck continued to argue that what they have planned for the redevelopment will improve the landscape and that “currently there isn't a lot of biodiversity in the area already. [...] The city code requires that WHA replant 63 trees but [WHA] is going to plant 84.”
He added that, “The redevelopment will bring a significant increase to the number of trees, the amount of green space, and a much healthier diversity of plant life, designed to contribute to the tree canopy in our community for a very, very long time. In short, this is not in any way a choice between affordable housing diversity and trees.”
The trees slated for replanting aren’t live oaks; species include white oaks, dogwoods, tulip poplars, black gums, and fringe trees, which aren’t the best for our area, nor will they eventually become specimen trees. That’s according to Dr. James Gregory, professor emeritus of forestry at NC State University, who lives in Wilmington and has served on the city’s Tree Commission, and currently serves as a senior advisor for Alliance for Cape Fear Trees. Joshua Shields, long-time arborist, also concurred that the trees pre-selected to replace the live oaks aren’t optimal.
“Their list of new plants and shrubs aren’t ‘open-pollinated native [ones]’, which are better for biodiversity,” Gregory said.
He added, “There are a few old dogwoods around Wilmington that seem to be healthy, but very seldom do you see an old dogwood that's healthy.”
Shields said he’s worried about the overall sustainability of the ones they’ve selected because trees like black gum, white oak, and tulip poplars prefer moist, wet soils, not the sandy, drier ones located at Hillcrest.
He also pointed out that James Freeman, of Freeman Landscapes, noted at the October 21 tree commission meeting that native fringe trees, which are on the developer’s list, are not commercially available and are typically substituted with Chinese fringe trees.
Gregory said it’s a dance between nursery owners and landscape architects over what gets planted at any new development.
While long-leaf pines are harder to replant, Gregory said he wants to see more of them as they play a special historical role in the Cape Fear region.
While tree preservation has been a point of discussion in the Hillcrest redevelopment project, Garrett early in the council meeting to drove home the economic value of WHA’s projects, which include Hillcrest.
“[Hillcrest] is one of five major redevelopment initiatives WHA is advancing,” Garrett said. “Collectively, those five projects are estimated to support over 1,300 jobs within Wilmington and New Hanover County, generate approximately $90 million in labor income, contribute approximately $234 million to the economic output, and add nearly $139 million in value — that would be in [the] national sense, GDP — to the local economy over the next five to seven years.”
