Edina Tree Preservation Escrow: What Builders Should Know

Holly Gillis thought she had found the right lot. A sloped, wooded parcel in Edina, zoned residential, with no house on it yet. She and her husband, Ethan Bassett, had been searching for an existing home they liked and came up short in a tight market, so they decided to build instead. Then came the number: the city wanted $95,000 held in escrow before construction could proceed, money the family wouldn't see back until they proved the trees they planted to replace the ones removed during construction had survived. "It's a nightmare," Gillis told the Star Tribune.

That story ran in late 2024. If you searched Edina building rules any time in the past year, it probably surfaced. What most of that coverage doesn't tell you is that the rule behind it no longer works the way it did when the Gillis family hit it. Edina rewrote the ordinance in February of this year, and the fight that forced the rewrite is already over.

How a Routine Tree Rule Became a Six-Figure Line Item

Edina's Tree Protection Ordinance dates back roughly a decade, but the version that caused the trouble took effect in 2023. It expanded the requirement citywide and applied to any project needing a building permit. If your plans called for removing a protected tree, defined as at least 5 inches in diameter for deciduous species or 15 feet tall for conifers, you had to submit a tree protection plan and post a cash escrow or letter of credit equal to 110 percent of the calculated replacement cost, according to the city's own ordinance page. The city could keep that money if replacement trees didn't survive.

City officials weren't wrong about the problem they were trying to solve. Edina City Manager Scott Neal said the ordinance grew out of years of resident concern that redevelopment was stripping the community's mature tree cover. Between January 2023 and late 2024, the city reviewed 455 permits under the rule, and 68 of those required an escrow. By the city's own count, roughly 3,677 trees were preserved through the process and 755 were removed.

The math worked fine for a routine remodel with one tree in the way. It worked very differently for a family building new on a heavily wooded lot, where dozens of mature trees might need to come down to make room for a foundation, a driveway, and a septic field. That's the gap Gillis and Bassett fell into, and they weren't alone.

The Lawsuit That Forced the Rewrite

By the fall of 2024, Housing First Minnesota, a trade association representing more than 900 builders, remodelers, subcontractors, and suppliers across the state, sent Edina's city leaders a demand letter asking them to change the ordinance. Nick Erickson, the group's senior director of housing policy, said he had never seen tree replacement figures as steep as the ones circulating in Edina. Neal agreed to meet with the group but stopped short of promising anything.

The conversation didn't resolve it. On August 22, 2025, Housing First Minnesota filed suit against the city in Hennepin County District Court, arguing Edina had no statutory authority to impose the fee structure. The complaint alleged the city had collected nearly $1 million in tree replacement fees over roughly three years, money the ordinance never required the city to actually spend on replanting.

That lawsuit is why the rule you might have read about no longer exists in its original form.

What the February Rewrite Actually Changed

On February 17, 2026, the Edina City Council voted 4-1 to approve the first reading of a rewritten ordinance, described by city staff as making technical, legal, and operational improvements rather than a wholesale reversal. Parks and Recreation Director Perry Vetter walked the council through the mechanics, and a few changes stand out for anyone budgeting a project:

• Faster money back. Under the original rule, the second half of an escrow deposit wasn't released until a site inspection three years after the certificate of occupancy. Under the revised ordinance, that inspection window shrinks to 12 months.
• An offsite option. If a lot can't physically accommodate the required replacement trees, applicants can now plant them on a neighboring property or an approved nearby site instead.
• Two ways to calculate the deposit. Property owners can still post 110 percent of a tree supplier's verified replacement quote, or use a price-per-inch or price-per-foot formula built into the ordinance.

Not everyone on the council thought the fix went far enough. Councilmember James Pierce cast the lone dissenting vote, saying grouping remodeling projects together with new construction under one set of rules "feels like it disadvantages others in the community." Housing First Minnesota apparently felt differently. By March 13, 2026, the group had dropped its lawsuit once the city had repealed and replaced the ordinance the suit was challenging.

What This Means If You're Building or Adding On Now

The number that made headlines, the near-six-figure escrow that hit one family, described a project on a heavily wooded lot under a rule that no longer applies as written. That doesn't mean the exposure disappeared. It means the shape of it changed, and the details now matter more than the headline did.

If your plan is a kitchen remodel or a modest addition on a lot with a tree or two near the footprint, you're likely looking at a manageable escrow and a shorter wait to get most of it back. If your plan involves a wooded or heavily treed lot where a meaningful number of mature trees have to come down to make room for a new build, budget for the deposit before you write an offer, not after your builder pulls the permit. Ask what a certified arborist or tree supplier would quote for replacement trees on that specific site, then run both the 110 percent method and the per-inch calculation to see which lands lower.

The timing lines up with something else happening in Edina at the same time. The Heritage Preservation Commission separately updated the Country Club District's Plan of Treatment, adding a new escrow requirement for Heritage Landmark properties effective January 1, 2026, just weeks before the tree ordinance rewrite passed. Two different city commissions, working on two different rules, both landed on financial escrow as the enforcement tool of choice within the same few months. If you're evaluating a property in the Country Club District specifically, that heritage escrow sits on top of, not instead of, whatever the tree ordinance requires for the same project.

Questions Worth Asking Before You Break Ground

Does this apply if I'm only doing a kitchen or bathroom remodel? The ordinance applies to any project that needs a building permit, but the escrow only triggers if the project requires removing a protected tree, one at least 5 inches in diameter for deciduous species or 15 feet tall for conifers. An interior remodel with no tree removal typically won't trigger it at all.

What if the lot I'm considering has no mature trees left? Then the tree protection plan requirement still applies to the permit process, but there's little or nothing to escrow against, since the deposit is tied to the value of trees actually being removed.

Does the Country Club District's heritage escrow replace the tree ordinance escrow? No. They're separate requirements from separate city commissions. A Country Club District property undergoing a significant exterior change or new construction could face both the heritage preservation escrow and the tree protection escrow on the same permit.

Rules like these rarely make it into a listing sheet, and they can reshape a construction budget by tens of thousands of dollars depending on which side of the line your project falls on. If you're weighing a wooded Edina lot, a teardown, or an addition that reaches toward the tree line, Aaron Spiteri can walk the site with you, help you get ahead of what the city will actually require, and make sure the number in your offer reflects the number you'll really need at closing.