Fayetteville’s Urban Forestry Advisory Board on Monday recommended that the City support a 2-for-1 land trade to allow Ozarks Electric to vacate an existing 0.95-acre tree preservation easement so the utility can add parking. The board voted informally in favor after members said a straight 1-to-1 swap would be a net loss for the city’s canopy and stormwater functions.

The easement requested for vacation sits behind a commercial building at 3661 West Wellington and currently contains about 0.69 acres of tree canopy. Ginny Burbage, a landscape architect representing the property owner, said the owner is seeking additional staff parking and asked for flexibility to relocate the easement to an existing forested area farther south along Elk Creek.

"We were going to request an acre," Burbage said, describing the owner’s initial offer. She told the board the 0.69-acre canopy within the existing easement prompted the owner to offer roughly 1 acre of continuous forested land in trade. Willow, the city’s forestry staff member handling the file, had proposed a larger replacement—about 2.3 acres plus 45 mitigation trees—prompting further negotiation.

Board members pushed back on a simple 1-to-1 swap. "If it's gonna be in the city's best interest to vacate an easement, I think you have to have more than 1 to 1," said one advisory council member during the discussion. Several members said the southern parcel under discussion appears to provide greater ecological value, including habitat and stormwater mitigation, than the small island of trees in the existing parking area.

After discussion, a board member moved that the advisory council support a 2-for-1 trade to vacate the 0.95-acre easement provided Ozarks Electric conveys two acres on the south end of the property as mapped in the meeting materials; another member seconded. The board adopted the recommendation by voice vote (recorded as "Aye"). The advisory council's recommendation will be conveyed to staff for inclusion in the formal review process before the planning commission and city council.

The applicant and staff said final design and timing are preliminary. Burbage said plans have not been drawn and any future parking layout would still need to meet development code requirements, including tree plantings for lots with more than four spaces. The applicant indicated a tentative timeline of sometime next year for design work.

Board members and public commenters also raised questions about long-term enforcement and whether Ozarks Electric would be required to maintain replacement trees if planted; no new maintenance condition was adopted at the meeting. Members emphasized the need for clear, consistent metrics for evaluating future easement vacations (for example, canopy area, basal area, biodiversity value) and suggested staff and consultants develop objective criteria for trade-offs.

The advisory board requested more detailed maps and ownership information from staff and the applicant before the item goes to planning commission and city council. The board noted the recommendation would create a precedent and urged a standard that produces net canopy or ecological gains for the city.

Votes at the meeting were recorded by voice; the motion to support the 2-for-1 trade carried by voice vote. No formal roll-call vote tally with individual yes/no votes was recorded in the meeting transcript.