Acre's Legion Park project draws 8 appeals over 46 trees
The rezoning was won in 2024. The landscape permit is what is actually holding the schedule.
Residents near Legion Park in Miami’s MiMo district have filed eight appeals against Acre Developments’ third Adela building, contesting a plan to remove 46 trees on the site, including five large oaks that opponents say are 120 to 150 years old. Acre has agreed to plant 103 replacement trees on completion.
Why it matters
Acre already won the fight everyone assumed was the fight. In 2024 it persuaded the City of Miami to rezone the bulk of its 3.25-acre Legion Park assemblage for buildings up to eight stories, over sustained neighborhood objection. The entitlement is not in question here.
What is holding the project is the landscape permit, and that is the transferable lesson. In an infill neighborhood with mature canopy, the tree code is a second entitlement with its own appeal track, its own record requirements and its own timeline, and it sits after your zoning approval rather than alongside it. A sponsor who budgets appeal risk only through the rezoning hearing has mispriced the schedule.
The opposition is arguing code compliance, not sentiment. “We feel strongly that they should stay, and also that they haven’t met the code requirements,” said attorney David Winker. Appeals framed as code failures are the ones that survive, because they give a board a defensible reason to remand rather than a preference to weigh.
The numbers
Forty-six trees come out. Five are large oaks. One hundred and three go back in, a mitigation ratio of roughly 2.2 to 1, which is meaningfully above a one-for-one replacement and did not prevent eight separate appeals from being filed.
That ratio is the number worth carrying into your own project. Volunteering above-code mitigation is standard advice for defusing landscape opposition. Here it bought a better record and did not buy consent, because the objection is to the specific trees, not the count. A 130-year-old oak and a nursery-stock replacement are not fungible in an appeal, whatever the ratio says.
Acre is led by Miami-based managing partner Michael Van Der Poel. Unit count and project size for the third building were not disclosed in the reporting; Acre’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
What’s next
Watch how the appeals are consolidated. Eight separate filings on one landscape permit can be heard together or serially, and that procedural choice is worth months. “Tonight it’s just going to be, we have so many appeals going on,” Winker said.
For anyone assembling in MiMo, Morningside, the Upper Eastside or any Miami neighborhood with a mature canopy, the practical step is to commission the tree survey before you close on the land, not after you have your zoning. The survey is what tells you whether your site plan has a second hearing in it. Miami entitlement coverage runs on our South Florida hub.