The goal

Get a senior living community through entitlement in a town with real scrutiny on trees, neighborhood character, and flood plain grading. The site had mature redwoods the community cared about and a fire safety overlay that limited the plant palette. The landscape needed to clear planning commission without dragging the schedule or burning budget on a fight.

What we did

We designed the landscape for the room that approves it, not just the team that builds it.

We exceeded the city’s tree replacement requirement, coming in at 3.2 to 1 against a required 2 to 1. We screened the plant list against the county’s fire-banned species so nothing gave a commissioner a reason to pause. And when grading to lift the building out of the flood plain forced the removal of redwoods the community valued, we brought a replacement evergreen grove to the commission with the explanation up front, not as a defense after the question came.

The results

Approved at planning commission, on schedule, with no continuance and no late-stage value engineering fight over landscape scope.

The tree question came up and went away. The over-delivery was noted positively in the staff report. The redwood removal, the most sensitive issue on the site, was settled before it became an argument, because the answer arrived with the problem. The roughly 5% added to the landscape budget protected months of approval timeline. On a senior living pro forma, that trade is not close.