March 2026 Update: Two Cedars Are Saved!

We are happy to announce that developer Olsen Anderson chose to save two of the four Dayton Cedars in their development project. Thank you to the neighborhood community and tree protection advocates who worked tirelessly to broadcast the importance of this grove.

Statement from Olsen Anderson:

At Olsen Anderson, we believe cities are at their best when people feel connected to the places they live. Homes are more than buildings, they are where daily life unfolds, where neighbors meet, and where people build meaningful connections to their communities.

As a Seattle-based team, we care deeply about the neighborhoods where we build. Our goal is to create homes and communities that reflect the character of the places they become part of, while helping support the walkable, connected urban life that makes Seattle such a special city.

When neighbors and local advocates reached out about the Dayton Cedars, it was clear these trees hold significant meaning for many people in the community. After revisiting the project and exploring additional engineering and design options, we made the decision to redesign the site in order to preserve two of the existing Western Red Cedars.

Development in a growing city inevitably involves balancing different needs and constraints. Seattle urgently needs more housing, particularly in established neighborhoods where thoughtful infill development allows more people to live close to jobs, transit, and the life of the city.

While the redesign cannot preserve all of the trees, we hope retaining two of the original cedars reflects a meaningful step toward balancing the need for housing with the community’s connection to this place.

We’re grateful for the constructive conversations that helped lead to this outcome and hopeful that it serves as a positive example of how communities and developers can work together to create neighborhoods where people feel connected and proud to live.

Warm regards,
Aegir E. Olsen
Managing Partner
Olsen Anderson

Thank you, Olsen Anderson!

Four Gigantic Cedars

SDCI is about to approve the removal of Greenwood’s most significant conifer grove. A developer is proposing to build four townhomes on this property, and remove four massive Western red cedarswhile they’re at it. However, these cedars don’t need to be removed — in fact, just moving the building footprint over a few feet and removing two parking spaces would provide enough room to retain these gigantic trees and build the same amount of proposed housing.

The four Dayton Cedars were meticulously cared for by the former owner of this property before he passed away in 2016. In the words of a neighbor:

"We met William (“Bill”) Dyment when we moved into the neighborhood in 1995. He would speak of his love for “the trees” during most conversations! He told me that he was born in Ballard and his parents brought him home from the hospital to that house. He told me that “as a youngster” his family drove up toward Snoqualmie Pass and dug up the small seedlings. They planted them around the perimeter of their yard, and he tended them until cancer took his life in 2016, at what I would guess was his mid 80’s. He lived in that house his entire life, and loved those trees almost the same number of years. It has been one of my family’s greatest joys to see those trees mature 30 years on our watch!"

Replacement Trees?

The developer has proposed planting 30 new trees across two properties they are developing, “replacing” the four cedars. Sounds great, right? But their current site design shows only small, ornamental replacement trees with no room for them to reach maturity. And under city guidelines, there is no room to plant these 30 trees and have the building they want.

Why? The developer's site designs show they want to "replace" these Western red cedars with Cascara trees. City guidelines require tons of planting space for Cascara trees, which get very wide at maturity. If the developer allocated this space for 30 Cascara trees, they wouldn't have any room for their proposed buildings. Concerningly, Cascara trees reach only 25 feet tall compared to the Western red cedar's 60 feet. They are also trees that need shade to survive, but there is no shade on this property.

Western red cedars are uniquely beneficial trees. Large conifers like these clean the air by trapping particulates in the little hairs on the backs of their needles. Seattle has 17% more air pollution than 10 years ago, and our air pollution is 10% higher than in similar-size U.S. cities. This is not the time to be removing massive Western red cedars.

Housing and Trees is Possible

An AIA-certified volunteer architect has shown one of the many ways all four trees could be saved while building the same amount of housing proposed by the developer. In fact, without any modification to the building drawings, the entire plan could be moved 10-12 feet north, which combined with removing two parking spaces, could save three of the trees or all of them.