Development could destroy what’s left of rural Oahu

Rural Oahu is under siege.

Kahuku, where I was born and raised, is beset on three sides by development proposals that threaten to pave our beautiful aina, overburden failing infrastructure and tear local families apart.

Recently, a draft of the Ko‘olau Loa Sustainable Communities Plan (KSCP) came before the Honolulu City Council Zoning and Planning Committee. This version, known as Bill 47, was rewritten after developers hijacked the original plan in closed-door meetings with the city’s Department of Planning and Permitting (DPP) to include a new project in Laie and a Turtle Bay expansion.

Now the Ko‘olau Loa Sustainable Communities Plan is neither sustainable nor a community plan.

A Public Advisory Committee (PAC) worked for two years drafting the original plan, which fit within the confines of the Oahu General Plan. The General Plan states, "Ko‘olau Loa’s natural resources and predominately ‘country’ character should be maintained by allowing only limited development in established communities, and that agricultural lands along the Windward, North Shore, and Wai‘anae coasts are to be maintained for diversified agriculture." PAC members represented all five communities in the moku and made sensible recommendations for growth while ensuring a sustainable future for the region.

The City Council is now being asked to approve a plan that would drastically change the intent of the General Plan and the nature of rural Oahu, putting us on a path toward urbanization of the entire island. All of this is happening while local families in Kahuku face eviction by another mainland developer who is seeking to pour concrete in Ko‘olau Loa.

The massive development proposal known as "Envision Laie" is based upon a questionable need to expand the campus of Brigham Young University-Hawaii (BYUH). This would add a new city between Laie and Kahuku on agricultural land in the ahupua’a of Malaekahana. Larger than both Laie and Kahuku, it would include a strip mall, industrial park, and up to 1,200 market and "affordable" houses.

I acknowledge the affordable housing crisis here. But Hawaii Reserves Inc. (HRI) has yet to put in writing how it defines "affordable," or explain its failure to build affordable housing within the existing community of Laie in the 1990s when it was given zoning approval. This failure robbed an entire generation in Laie of the chance to own a home. Since the proposed new employment would involve BYU student interns and low-wage service jobs, the developer should also explain how the jobs created would allow residents to afford home ownership.

Also, a proposed mauka road cutting across kuleana lands, even if allowable, would hardly mitigate increased traffic on the two-lane, 100-year-old Kamehameha Highway.

Residents are right to question the larger impacts of these serious issues and the loss of agricultural lands.

Recommendations to limit the amount of expansion at the Turtle Bay Resort were also changed in the DPP draft. Owners now tout a proposal featuring "60 percent less density." But this number is based upon a nearly 30-year-old plan to build five additional hotels and 1,000 condominiums (still technically allowed by the plan), adding the equivalent of another Waikiki to Oahu.

The latest plan at Turtle Bay would actually increase the property footprint 300 percent and is comprised mainly of hundreds of multi-million-dollar "resort residential" units that would sprawl over nearly five miles of wild coastline from Kahuku Point to Kawela Bay.

Almost every member of my family (the DelaCruz ohana) either currently works at Turtle Bay or has in the past. We love Turtle Bay and have always supported it, just as it has supported us over the years. Yet, there is no promise of full-service hotels or unionized jobs with the new development plan. Instead, condos and timeshares would reduce and harm job prospects essentially eliminating true, long-term employment benefits to the local community.

Like many others, we know that the reason guests come to Turtle Bay is to get away from the urban experience of Waikiki. We feel that this special dynamic is not broken and the hotel has been quite successful in the past decade marketing its unique rural "country" feel.

Ours is a compromise position. We support amending Bill 47 to reflect the wishes of all communities in Ko’olau Loa and reverting to the original PAC version. It allows for affordable housing within the existing community boundary of Laie and provides HRI with zoning height flexibility to develop to higher densities close to existing infrastructure, thus lowering prices.

It also places Turtle Bay in a Special Management District, allowing for modest growth within the existing footprint and conserving the undeveloped portions of the property. This idea is advocated by current and former state administrations and supported by the vast majority of Oahu residents.

It is our obligation to bear witness to what is happening in rural Oahu. Everyone who cares about this place must know that multinational banks and corporations are inching closer to destroying a global treasure. Our City Council must make this KSCP truly sustainable before it is too late.

———

Jessica dos Santos is co-chair of the Defend Oahu Coalition.