Board deputy chairman John Bellamy raised the alarm with contractors who appeared to be preparing to move in with heavy machinery to remove the plantings from the roadside on Thursday morning.
The trees and shrubs frame the bay's picturesque beach area, but were to be removed to make way for two cycle lanes planned as part of road widening and safety work on the Peninsula.
But Mr Bellamy, other community board members and residents believed an agreement with the council two years ago meant the plantings were to be retained.
Mr Bellamy told the Otago Daily Times he only spotted the contractors preparing for the job when he arrived to begin work at his Macandrew Bay gallery that morning.
After frantically trying to reach the contractors' senior managers - without luck - Mr Bellamy approached the work crew directly and convinced them to stop work until the "miscommunication" could be ironed out.
Several trees had already been removed and he estimated the remainder would have been gone "by the end of the day".
He said staff changes within the Dunedin City Council over the past two years may have contributed to the agreement to protect the trees slipping between the cracks.
However, council roading projects engineer Evan Matheson said calling the issue a "miscommunication" was "probably a little bit harsh on the engineering side of things", and the work was unlikely to have been carried out until next week.
The original widening project had been redesigned about a year ago, to include cycle lanes, and he believed updated plans had been sent to the community board, he said.
However, the redesign meant the cycle lanes encroached on the plantings "probably more than the community and community board anticipated", he conceded.
"It probably would have been helpful to have walked over the whole site with the community board and identified the full impacts of the job, rather than just relying on a set of plans to convey the information," he said.
Several pohutukawa trees have already been moved from the site to another preferred location within Macandrew Bay, and several other plantings lost during work to date.
However, a quick redesign on Thursday meant the remaining plantings could now be accommodated.
"All credit to the community board . . .
"It was a good positive move on their behalf," Mr Matheson said.
