Goal

A senior living developer brought us in early on a three-acre infill site in Danville. Seven single-family homes shared the property line. Mature trees defined the neighborhood. Some had to come down. The neighbors were already concerned before the formal process started. The developer needed a path through entitlement that didn’t turn into a year of revisions.

Process

We hired an arborist before the planning process began. Then we knocked on doors. All seven neighbors. We stood in their backyards and their living rooms and looked at what they could actually see, what they were worried about losing. A sightline to the hills. Privacy from a second-story window. Shade on a pool. We took those conversations back into the tree disposition plan, the removal strategy, the planting strategy. We added mitigation measures neighbors could implement on their own property. We documented every decision and the reasoning behind it.

Result

At the planning commission hearing, our team could say something almost no developer gets to say: we met with every affected neighbor and walked their property. The tree strategy stopped being a fight and became part of the project narrative. The commission moved on to the rest of the project. Approvals came faster. Revisions were fewer. The developer moved to the next challenge instead of spending six months on this one.