Local real estate development firm Alexander &Baldwin Inc. cleared a major hurdle Thursday for building a roughly $40 million beachfront condominium project on Kahala Avenue, obtaining a preliminary endorsement from a City Council committee despite area neighborhood board opposition.

Several Kahala residents turned out for the Council hearing and disagreed over whether the project, which comprises three two-story buildings each containing two homes, improves or degrades the character of the neighborhood, which is largely a mix of modern mansions and historic single-family homes.

The acting director of the city Department of Planning and Permitting, Art Challacombe, said the effect of the A&B project on the neighborhood’s character isn’t pertinent to the permit. Members of the Council’s Committee on Zoning and Planning agreed, voting 5-0 to adopt a resolution granting the permit.

The committee vote is a prelude to a decision by the full nine-member Council expected next month.

A&B needs a special management area use permit. This type of permit, which regulates impacts on coastal resources, historically wasn’t required for residential development. But the state Legislature in 2012 made residential projects with more than 7,500 square feet of living space subject to such permits.

Under city zoning rules, A&B’s 58,207-square-foot lot at 4607 Kahala Ave. could be developed with as many as seven single-family homes.

“This use is allowed,” Jeff Overton, a principal with local planning and design firm G70 representing A&B, told the committee. “We’re not seeking any variances here. It’s a lot less than we’re entitled to build on the property. It’s like three large homes but they’re stacked flats.”

Stacked flats refers to one residence on a single level in each two-story building. Each home is designed to be about 5,000 square feet and include its own pool. Owners would share common areas such as driveways. To break even, A&B would have to sell each condo for $6.7 million based on a $40 million development cost. A&B has said the project could cost $40 million to $45 million.

Rich Turbin, a local attorney and chairman of the Waialae-Kahala Neighborhood Board, which voted 5-1 in March to oppose the A&B condo plan, told the committee that they should reject A&B’s application because it will lead to more such projects and ruin Kahala.

“We’re going to have a luxury apartment area in Kahala that we really don’t need,” he said. “We’re going to have what I call the Californication (of Kahala). I mean, that sounds like a swearword, but Kahala is going to change. Kahala is an iconic neighborhood in Hawaii. It is probably the premier residential neighborhood in maybe the entire Pacific Basin.

Councilman Trevor Ozawa, committee chairman, said the issue at hand was coastal impacts. “I empathize with the fact that you’re worried by the precedent that could be set by this,” he told Turbin. “However, by the same token, what they’re proposing is completely legal.”

Challacombe of DPP said the impact of A&B’s plan on the neighborhood’s character is irrelevant to special management area law. “This project meets all of the requirements,” he said.

DPP, which held a public hearing on A&B’s plan in August, recommended that the Council approve the permit.

Lucinda Pyles, an area neighborhood board member, argued that A&B’s plan does not adequately address expected sea level rise because two buildings are slated to be built as close as allowed to the shoreline, about 40 feet inland.

Overton, however, countered that requiring buildings to be set back farther than what rules specify now should be something considered as a policy statewide and not just for the A&B project. “We’re not this monster overhanging the beach,” he said.

Overton also said the three buildings don’t look out of place in Kahala. “This is going to be a beautiful addition to the Kahala neighborhood,” he said. “It is very consistent with what exists today.”

Some Kahala residents echoed that view, including Thos Rohr, who helped open the Kahala Hilton in 1964. “I think the A&B plan is terrific,” he said.

Roger Wall, vice chairman of Foodland Super Market, who has lived in Kahala for 25 years, praised A&B for buying 4607 Kahala as part of 30 residential properties along the same street about three years ago from the Japanese billionaire Genshiro Kawamoto, who had turned many homes into unoccupied eyesores with broken walls, putrid pools and butchered landscaping.

“Although they are serving stockholders, I think that they have really stepped up to be stewards (of Kahala),” said Wall, whose wife, Jenai, is a paid A&B board member. “I lived in the middle of the Kawamoto experiment with my family, and it was a really stressful time for us.”

A&B estimates that if it obtains necessary permits, it can finish development work in 2019.

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Clarification: This story has been updated to include that Roger Wall is married to a paid A&B board director, Jenai Wall. An earlier version of this story did not include this information.