The governor’s wife voiced her opposition, but the state Wednesday gave developers of a planned $380 million luxury condominium tower in Kakaako an exemption from a rule intended to preserve mauka-makai views.
Developer OliverMcMillan and landowner JN Automotive will be allowed to advance their plan to build the 400-foot Symphony Honolulu tower with its broad side along an Ewa-Diamond Head axis.
The rule, enacted in November, requires that broad sides of new towers face the opposite way, parallel to the nearest of five mauka-makai streets — Punchbowl, South, Cooke, Ward and Piikoi — within a 20-degree deviation.
But the Hawaii Community Development Authority voted 10-1 to grant the Symphony tower a variance to that rule.
Eleven people, including Nancie Caraway, the wife of Gov. Neil Abercrombie, spoke against the variance at a public hearing Wednesday. Four people spoke in favor of the variance. But written testimony overwhelmingly backed the developer’s request, with 117 expressions of support compared with 14 in opposition.
Most of the supportive letters were a variation of several form letters.
Some criticized the agency for burdening developers with requirements that stifle home production, including moderately priced units, in an area designated for dense urban development.
Others said the tower as proposed would be an improvement over the undeveloped lot on the site at the mauka-Ewa corner of Ward and Kapiolani Boulevard. And many letters expressed concern that rejecting the variance would kill the project, which is required to produce 20 percent of its units at moderate prices.
"Don’t let a brand new rule stop your successes dead in their tracks," said one repeated letter. "This is not the time to make it harder for folks to invest in this urban neighborhood."
"Don’t stop this developer from building because of new requirements that do not enhance the property," another repeated letter said.
Some opponents criticized the variance request as a precedent that minimizes pedestrian views mauka and makai at the expense of maximizing mauka and makai views of condo units.
Caraway said she supports the vision of Kakaako as an urban community. But she reminded agency members of the need to protect Oahu’s natural beauty, and said it was sad that the first project under the HCDA’s new rules is seeking to transcend the one intended to protect public views.
"Dare I invoke the Sheraton Waikiki?" she asked, referring to a project many residents consider an obliteration of view planes.
San Diego-based OliverMcMillan presented several reasons why it should be relieved from conforming to the rule. One is that the site is bound by two major thoroughfares that require the tower be set back significantly from the sidewalk on two sides, which restrains how much of the site can be used.
The developer also said energy to cool the building would be 18 percent higher during the peak of summer under the rule because the building’s long sides would be in the sun’s direct path.
OliverMcMillan’s application said soft sediment from an old underground stream makes building the tower difficult under the rule.
Dan Nishikawa, the company’s development director, said in a presentation last week that additional geotechnical studies showed the sediment is no longer a significant factor. But on Wednesday he told HCDA members that it does pose problems. "We don’t even know if we can build the tower in the other direction," he said.
HCDA is a state agency that governs development of 450 acres bounded by Ala Moana Boulevard and King, Piikoi and Punchbowl streets.
Anthony Ching, HCDA executive director, said he believes the sediment does affect tower placement.
Ching presented a staff report recommending approval of the variance, explaining that the rule does intend to preserve mauka-makai views for pedestrians, but not from anywhere in Kakaako. He said the impact on mauka views is limited to "view sheds" projected from two places: the middle of Kakaako Waterfront Park and a jetty at Kewalo Basin.
According to an OliverMcMillan rendering, its preferred orientation would obscure more of the mountains from the Kewalo site compared with what the rule allows. However, the HCDA considered that same view if several planned towers along Ala Moana are built. In that case, other towers obscure all or nearly all of any mountain views regardless of Symphony’s position.
That rationale was lost on some observers, including an architect involved in urban design.
Scott Wilson, chairman of the American Institute of Architects’ local urban design committee, called view sheds an "overly narrow" concept that disregards mauka views from farther inland. Wilson suggested that the rule appears to have no real purpose under HCDA’s interpretation.
Janet Dagan, a resident living on the slopes of Punchbowl, said she expects to see tower after tower built in Kakaako without regard for pedestrian views toward the mountains or ocean.
"It will look like Hong Kong," she said.
Symphony still needs a development permit from the agency, though the variance was a controversial preliminary issue that needed to be considered first.
