The Dallas Tree Ordinance, Explained For Commercial Property

The Landscape and Tree Conservation Regulations as approved by City Council on June 27, 2018. The city's own Article X page lists that approval as the most recent and no amendment after it, which is as far as currency can be confirmed from outside: the codified current text sits on American Legal, which blocks automated access. Before anything is filed on a specific site, check the codified version for changes since.

Any tree of a species not on the unprotected list, with a minimum eight-inch diameter. Two additions catch people out: a tree in a stand projecting canopy over a building site counts, and so does any tree that was itself planted as a replacement tree. That last one means yesterday's mitigation planting becomes today's protected tree.

Possibly not, and Dallas is unusually explicit about it. The article lists unprotected species including Callery pear, chinaberry, Chinese tallow, tree-of-heaven, all palms, and Ilex species other than yaupon and possumhaw holly. Establishing what's on a site before assuming everything counts is frequently the cheapest hour on the project.

A higher category with its own threshold, and the practical point is that the development waiver never applies to one. Post oaks qualify at twelve inches; American elm, bois d'arc, cedar elm, chittamwood, common persimmon, eastern red cedar, green ash, pecan, the walnuts, white ash and all other oaks qualify at twenty-four. A significant tree in the middle of your building pad is a mitigation obligation regardless of the footprint.

It can, and Dallas is the only city in this market that says so explicitly. Article X defines removing or seriously injuring a tree as an intentional or negligent act that will more likely than not cause it to decline and die within five years, and names excessive pruning, topping and soil compaction among the acts that qualify. Topping a protected tree is therefore a code matter rather than an aesthetic argument.

Mitigation is waived for trees removed inside the development impact area, up to seventy percent of the tree removal property. Past that it applies pro rata: the code's own example is that an eighty-five percent impact area means fifteen percent of removed trees must be mitigated. It's a genuine relief mechanism rather than a technicality, and it's the single most valuable provision on a Dallas commercial site.

Yes, and this is where sites lose the benefit without noticing. The waiver doesn't extend to parking beyond what's required, and the reduction is pro rata on the excess. The code works it through: four hundred and fifty spaces required against five hundred and twenty-one provided means 15.78 percent of the mitigation isn't waived. Designing in surplus parking has a tree cost attached to it.

Yes. Mitigation may be met by payment into the Reforestation Fund, which the director administers to plant trees on public property and to fund urban forest work. On a dense infill site with nowhere to put replacement stock this is often the only workable route, and it's worth pricing early rather than discovering it after a planting plan has been rejected for lack of room.