If you're buying in Easton Addition instead of Burlingame Park, you've probably been told you've sidestepped the city's historic-preservation rules. That part is true. Burlingame's formal historic-resource review currently applies in only two places: inside Burlingame Park, and to any property listed in the 2008 Downtown Specific Plan inventory. Everywhere else in the city, that particular gate doesn't exist.
But there's a second gate, and it doesn't care what neighborhood you're in, what year your house was built, or whether a historic society has ever looked at your block. Burlingame's Protected Tree Ordinance applies citywide, to any tree measuring 14 inches in diameter at breast height, regardless of species. A five-year-old sycamore someone planted after a 1990s remodel can trigger the same permit requirement as a century-old oak. For anyone planning an addition, an ADU, or a teardown, that ordinance is the one more likely to reshape the project, and it's the one most renovation guides skip past on the way to talking about historic districts.
The rule that isn't about age
Burlingame consolidated its tree regulations into a single Protected Tree Ordinance in a code update filed with the state's environmental clearinghouse in December 2024, merging what had been two separate chapters into one. The mechanics are specific: any protected tree can be pruned back no more than 25 percent of its crown or 15 percent of its roots without triggering a permit, and removing or effectively killing a protected tree without proper authorization carries an in-lieu fee reported at roughly $22,000 as of early 2026, payable into the city's Tree Replacement Fund if a suitable replacement can't be planted on site.
The city posts every approved removal publicly, and the spring 2026 notices show the ordinance is not a formality. Applications came in for a London Planetree and a Mexican Fan Palm at 481 Rollins Road, eight Monterey Pines at 2966 Arguello Drive, and two Date Palms plus a Coast Live Oak at 2301 Easton Drive. None of those species are the city's signature heritage eucalyptus. All of them still required a reviewed permit before the saws came out.
The species-blind design is the point. Burlingame's most famous trees, the Howard-Ralston Eucalyptus Tree Rows along El Camino Real, earned National Register listing in 2012 after decades of fights over root damage and road-widening plans. That history is why the ordinance treats size and structural risk, not pedigree, as the trigger. A buyer who assumes only heritage groves are protected will misjudge a backyard full of ordinary, decades-old trees that happen to have grown past the threshold.
The rule that is about age, and only fires in two places
Historic review works differently. Burlingame's Historic Resources chapter creates a register populated two ways: properties individually listed on the National or California Register, and properties identified in the city's own survey work. For most of Burlingame, that second path simply hasn't been walked yet. City planning discussions on expanding the program have been explicit that right now there are two triggers for a historic evaluation: a property's location inside Burlingame Park, or its appearance on the list generated by the 2008 Downtown Specific Plan inventory, itself built from a 2007 field survey of more than 500 parcels by preservation consultants Carey & Co. Outside those two areas, there is no standing mechanism that flags a property for historic evaluation before a major project moves forward.
That asymmetry means a 1920s house in Easton Addition and a 1920s house in Burlingame Park can face entirely different review paths for the same scope of work, even though both are the same age and both sit inside the same city.
| Mechanism | Geographic reach | What triggers it | What it can require |
|---|---|---|---|
| Protected Tree Ordinance | Citywide | Any tree at or above 14 inches DBH, any species | Arborist assessment, removal permit, possible in-lieu fee near $22,000 |
| Historic-resource evaluation | Burlingame Park and the Downtown Specific Plan inventory only | Location inside those two areas, or a discretionary permit application | Historic evaluation, possible register listing, design review on exterior changes |
What this means block by block
In Easton Addition, a buyer planning a rear addition should expect the tree question to arrive before the historic question does, if it arrives at all. The neighborhood carries dense heritage tree inventory and mature specimen oaks that predate the surrounding subdivision, which is exactly the profile the tree ordinance was written to catch.
In Burlingame Park, both mechanisms can apply to the same project. A property there sits inside the one residential area where a historic evaluation is essentially built into the discretionary permit process, and it may also carry protected trees subject to the same citywide rules as everywhere else. That stacking is a real scheduling risk for anyone budgeting a renovation timeline around a single round of city review.
Along California Drive and the stretch of El Camino Real running through the Howard-Ralston rows, the tree question gets an added layer. Those groves carry both local heritage-grove designation dating to 1975 and federal recognition, so any work anywhere near that root zone invites scrutiny well beyond a standard removal permit.
The Mills Act is the release valve, not the whole story
For owners who do end up on the historic register, whether through the Burlingame Park trigger or individual National Register listing, the city offers a genuine offset. When Burlingame adopted its historic-preservation ordinance, the city cited an example of a property valued at $1.1 million with an $11,000 annual tax levy dropping to roughly $3,818 a year under a Mills Act contract, a reduction the city estimated would cut its own share of that revenue from about $1,870 to $649. The program started as a downtown pilot after roughly 16 years of advocacy from the Burlingame Historical Society, with city leaders at the time voicing interest in eventually expanding it beyond downtown.
The contract itself runs through the Historic Resources chapter of the municipal code. Only properties already listed on the Burlingame Historic Resources Register, the National Register, or the California Register are eligible. The application can be processed alongside a historic-resource nomination rather than after it, and the city director has 60 days from a completed application to prepare recommendations. A denied application can't be resubmitted for a year. None of that helps a property outside the two trigger areas, since there's nothing to designate in the first place, but for a Burlingame Park buyer weighing the extra review against a tax benefit, the math is worth running early rather than after the offer is accepted.
A sequence that keeps both gates from surprising you
- Before finalizing a design or an offer price, walk the lot with a certified arborist and measure every tree at 4.5 feet above grade. Fourteen inches and up means it's protected, whatever the species, whatever its age.
- Confirm whether the address sits inside Burlingame Park or on the Downtown Specific Plan inventory list before assuming a historic evaluation isn't in play. If it is, build that review into your permit timeline, not around it.
- Pull the full permit history from the city before writing an offer. Unpermitted past work compounds risk under both systems, since an undocumented addition can complicate a historic evaluation and an undocumented tree removal can trigger the in-lieu fee retroactively.
- If the property is register-eligible, evaluate a Mills Act application at the same time as the historic nomination rather than waiting, given the concurrent-processing option built into the code.
A few questions that come up often
Does a young tree really count if it's not attractive or historic? Yes. The ordinance measures trunk diameter, not age or appearance. Many trees planted decades ago have simply grown into the protected range without anyone tracking it.
Can the city stop an ADU because of a tree? Not entirely. State law limits how much a city can deny an ADU or Senate Bill 9 project over tree removal, but Burlingame can still attach conditions to how and when a tree comes down, so it's a negotiation point rather than a guaranteed pass.
If my house isn't in a historic district, am I fully clear of extra review? Only on the historic side. The tree ordinance still applies to every parcel in the city, which is precisely why it catches more projects than the historic overlay does.
Getting the sequence right on a Burlingame renovation is less about knowing every ordinance by number and more about knowing which one to check first. Griffith Partners works with Peninsula buyers and owners through exactly this kind of pre-purchase and pre-renovation due diligence, from reading a property's tree exposure to confirming its place on the historic inventory before a design is finalized. If you're weighing a project or a purchase in Burlingame, reach out for a conversation grounded in what the parcel actually requires, not just what the neighborhood assumes.