Council approves alternate landscape plan for Boxwood 2, waives $10,512 fee in lieu

The Taylor City Council on Jan. 9 approved an alternate landscape plan for the Boxwood 2 development at 2002 West Second Street and declined to require a $10,512 fee in lieu of tree mitigation that staff had recommended.

City staff said an updated tree survey and differences between plan sheets caused iterative changes during permitting and that some trees shown as saved on earlier plan pages had been removed. That change increased the mitigation requirement to about 162 caliper inches. Staff obtained nursery quotes and calculated an average cost of $194.67 per caliper inch, producing a proposed fee-in-lieu of $10,512.

Rachel Louder, the applicant’s representative, told council the project team had followed the originally approved pages (1–22) and that a different drawing on page 23 was not caught earlier by HDR, the landscape architect, or the city. Louder said the site is “so full of trees” that additional plantings would harm tree integrity and that the team had already planted about 33 trees in accordance with earlier approvals.

Planning commission members recommended approval of the alternate landscaping plan but declined to require the staff-recommended fee, citing that the discrepancy should have been identified earlier in the process. Several council members agreed that staff oversight had contributed to the problem and moved to approve the alternate plan with no fee.

A motion to approve the alternate landscape plan as presented and not require the fee in lieu carried unanimously. Council also invited the developer to participate in the city’s Arbor Day tree-planting event on April 25, 2025, as a goodwill step.