Land purchase renews fears

It’s been a decade since North Shore residents organized to oppose development of a retail center in Pupukea across from Sharks Cove. Now concerns over development on the same site are rising again after the property’s recent purchase.

A company called Hanapohaku LLC paid $5.5 million for the 2.7-acre parcel adjacent to Foodland and zoned for commercialuse, according to property records.

Andrew Yani, a principal of Hanapohaku and local solar power company Bonterra Solar, said no plans for the property have been solidified yet.

"We are giving a lot of thought to what is most needed to serve the needs of the North Shore community,"he said in an email.

North Shore residents are concerned that another attempt at building a retail center is afoot, though many community members object only to dense commercial development and would welcome a project that caters to the community and doesn’t create significant traffic impacts or threaten the marine environment across Kamehameha Highway.

Local development firm Honu Group Inc. touched off heavy opposition to a retail complex it planned 10 years ago called Pupukea Village on the same site, which is sparsely populated with a few businesses including a food truck and a surf shop.

Honu had acquired an option to develop the property and announced plans for a $17 million shopping center that included five buildings housing 53 stores, underground parking for about 200 cars and space for commercial buses to drop off tourists.

The developer produced a draft environmental assessment in 2004 and anticipated that construction would start in 2005 and finish a year later.

However, members of the community railed against the plan, calling it inappropriate for the neighborhood and raising concerns that traffic congestion would be too much to bear, while a proposed sewage treatment system might pollute Sharks Cove.

"It was just all wrong," said Kathleen Pahinui, chairwoman of the North Shore Neighborhood Board. "It was too big. It was massive."

Some North Shore residents welcomed the project, but what was described as a vocal majority protested the plan by creating petitions, making signs and bumper stickers that said "No mall at Sharks Cove" and forming the nonprofit group Friends of Sharks Cove.

Cora Sanchez, chairwoman of Friends of Sharks Cove, noted at the time that the developer’s plan to partially treat and recycle wastewater for use as irrigation for landscaping and injection into either cesspools or ground wells could harm the popular swimming and diving cove protected under a state marine life conservation district.

Sanchez and others said a more rigorous environmental impact statement should be required for the project, and the North Shore Neighborhood Board passed a resolution asking for one.

Sanchez also said the Pupukea Village plan did not fit the zoning of the property.

The land has B-1 neighborhood business zoning, which the city’s land use ordinance said is intended to "provide relatively small areas which serve the daily retail and other business needs of the surrounding population … along local and collector streets but not along major travel routes or on a large-scale basis."

Honu described its plan for the 59,000-square-foot center with one- and two-story buildings as a compact, small-scale rural community shopping center with plantation-style architecture. But the company abandoned the project short of completing the environmental review process.

Blake McElheny, a neighborhood board member who grew up in Pupukea, said he hopes the new landowner solicits input from residents about future use of the property, especially given that traffic in the area has become more of an issue over the past couple of years because of the increasing popularity of Sharks Cove and surrounding beach areas.

"Transportation and traffic backup is now a huge deal on this stretch of Kamehameha Highway,"he said.

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