Declaring the “soul of the neighborhood” at risk, a skeptical city oversight board deferred a vote on a request to remove 75 trees from a South Grove property, offering a developer time to rethink his proposal.
A city oversight board has signaled to the owners of a property on Leafy Way in South Grove that they will likely reject a request to remove 75 trees to make way for a new construction project unless they make significant changes to their proposed landscaping plan.
After sharp questioning from members of the city’s Historic, Environmental and Preservation (HEP) Board on Tuesday, an attorney for the property’s owner/developer agreed to return to the board in July with a revised plan that takes into account neighbor concerns over canopy loss.
“I’m really trying to get you guys to understand that there are the overall number [of trees removed] and there’s the science,” HEP Board member Najeeb Campbell told the property owners’ representatives. “But there’s also the soul of the neighborhood… the landscape, the little trees, and the canopy.”
A City of Miami staff analysis of the tree removal request is equally damning. “It is not clear how the applicant has demonstrated a ‘good faith’ effort to redesign the project in a manner that protects the trees,” wrote Kenneth Kalmis, the city’s Historic Preservation Officer.
The South Grove residential property falls within an Environmental Preservation District, a City of Miami zoning designation that provides added layers of public oversight and protection due to its historic and ecological importance. Because of that designation, the city’s HEP Board must weigh in on all tree removal applications.
The owners are proposing a 10,000-square-foot mansion on the 16,000-square-foot lot, replacing an existing 100-year-old home – built by a prominent Grove figure and the founder of the Leafy Way subdivision – and an estimated 90 percent of the lush tree canopy that gives the neighborhood its name.
When platted more than a century ago much of Leafy Way’s canopy was left intact, offering early pioneers distinctive homesites carved from the dense hardwood hammock that covered much of Coconut Grove.
The property’s owners did not attend Tuesday’s meeting but board members took their architect and landscape architect to task for what they called “architectural inflexibility,” arguing that no noticeable concessions were made to a building design that seems to maximize available footprint and hardscape.
“It’s very important to see not just an increase in the number of trees but in a thoughtful and cohesive incorporation of the verdant environment that currently exists,” said board member Luis Prieto y Munoz, counseling the design team to return with a plan more respectful of existing tree canopy. “Leafy Way is a special place and it needs to be treated as such.”
