The Fort Worth Urban Design Commission (UDC) met on September 17, 2026, to consider three certificate of appropriateness waiver requests and receive updates on form-based code updates for Panther Island and Camp Bowie. Public testimony was heard on two cases, and all votes were unanimous.
1. Tree Preservation Waiver for Multifamily Development
2. Pedestrian-Scale Lighting Waiver for Duplex (UDC 2026-137)
3. First Floor Floor-to-Floor Height Waiver for Townhomes (UDC 2026-205)
Relatively large site. You see, here we have two overlapping easements that basically run north-south through the property. One of them is an eighty-foot utility easement on the right here, and then a twenty-five-foot sanitary sewer easement on the left. They overlap a bit. It's about eighty-six feet, cutting straight through the property of easement that they can't develop in, and for urban forestry, that area is considered exempt. So they're proposing to remove both of these trees, which would leave them preservation of zero percent. This is their proposed planting plan. Several exist or several proposed buildings, detention area down here, and then obviously all of the associated parking. This plan shows these proposed cedar elms along the frontage for eight twenty. I spoke with the applicant earlier today. Text dot mixed those. So they weren't included in the urban forestry numbers anyways. They were just shown on the plan here, and they were included in the staff report. As mentioned, they were being planted. Text dot shut that down. So those 23 trees are no longer going to be happening, but it doesn't affect any of our numbers. For multifamily developments, the urban forestry requirement isn't based on the area of the property. It's based on the provided open space. So the provided open space for the site minus deductible areas, which is basically just that eighty-six foot easement is two hundred and one thousand seven hundred and fifty-two square feet. The existing tree canopy between those two trees, three hundred and eight square feet. So of the net urban forestry area, point one five percent, almost nothing. The required preservation would be seventy-seven square feet, which is the twenty-five percent. The required tree canopy coverage for the site is one hundred thousand square or one hundred thousand eight hundred and eighty-one square feet. They're proposing no preservation, and they're proposing to provide 315,400 in square feet, which is just over three times their requirement. And then the parking lot canopy requirement. So the area of parking that they provided is 236,687 square feet of parking. The canopy requirement for that would be 94,675. And they're proposing 164,425, which exceeds by just over or almost 70,000 square feet. So based on the existing conditions, um, the difficulty that the easement, because both of the existing trees are located in the northeast. So with that easement and preserving one of those trees could make developing that northeast portion difficult. And the fact that the only two existing trees are both seven-inch trees. Um staff supports this waiver, and we recommend approving the request to reduce the preservation requirement from 25% down to zero. And I'm available if you guys have any questions. Thank you. Any questions? Caleb, I'm curious. Did Text Doc give a reason why they nixed those trees? I'll let the applicant answer that. Okay. Just curious. Are the cedar elms because they're in the easement, not required to be included? Is that the reason, or we're not sure? So for urban forestry, these the 23 pseudomes that they were showing, they're considered off-site. So they were shown on their plan. They weren't included in their urban forestry calculations. So the numbers I went through, those are still the correct numbers. They had already omitted those. The applicant was just electing to preserve them, I believe, for some enhanced landscaping credit and text dot shut that down. Is the applicant here to speak? Yes.