Defend Oahu wants Turtle Bay expansion approval nixed

A community group opposing Turtle Bay Resort expansion plans has renewed a push to block the project by challenging the validity of a 27-year-old state approval for enlarging the resort on Oahu’s North Shore.

The Defend Oahu Coalition filed a motion Tuesday with the state Land Use Commission asking the agency to consider revoking its 1986 approval for expanding the resort on a parcel that was previously farmland.

The group contends that 236 acres of the 880-acre property should revert to agricultural use because several representations, commitments and conditions the resort owner made or agreed to in the expansion approval have been unfulfilled.

“Promises have been broken,” said Tim Vandeveer, a Defend Oahu spokes­man. “We believe that the law matters and feel that the commission has a mandate and an obligation to require that developers make good on promises to our state and community in exchange for zoning modifications.”

Scott McCormack, vice president of real estate for the resort’s asset manager, Replay Resorts Inc., said the company is “extremely disappointed” that Defend Oahu filed the motion after Replay spent three years listening to and addressing reasonable concerns raised by the group and the broader community — an effort that led to a scaled-back expansion plan.

“In response to community input and concerns, we have provided a balanced and reasonable plan,” he said. “We will continue to work through the process with integrity.”

Defend Oahu’s move represents a second attempt to have the LUC reassess its 1986 approval to expand Turtle Bay Resort. The group filed a similar motion with the agency in 2008, but commissioners couldn’t muster enough votes at a February 2010 hearing to approve or reject the motion, so the issue has remained undecided.

Since then the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that an environmental impact statement pertaining to the resort’s expansion should be updated; the resort’s owners are fulfilling that requirement and have unveiled a revised expansion plan.

Defend Oahu argues that these two recent developments lend new support to its contention that the LUC approval should be revoked.

“The court’s ruling supports reversion of this parcel” to agricultural use, said Greg Kugle, an attorney representing Defend Oahu.

Kugle added that the updated environmental impact statement shows a “completely different” project compared with what was proposed to and approved by the LUC.

Defend Oahu also contends that development timetables, affordable-housing construction and job creation pronouncements in the 1986 approval have not been fulfilled and are other reasons the approval should be voided.

Some of the same arguments were raised in Defend Oahu’s 2008 motion, which came close to being rejected by the LUC.

Much of the debate over the 2008 motion focused on a proposed timetable for completing the expansion plan substantially by 1991 and completely by 1996.

At a hearing in 2010 that followed a series of deferred actions, the state Office of Planning recommended against the LUC deciding whether the 1986 approval should be revoked, in large part because it viewed the timetable as a proposal and not a condition.

LUC members voted 4-1 against Defend Oahu’s motion in 2010, but four votes weren’t enough to reject the motion. One member abstained and three were absent.

Complicating the issue is that the land pertaining to the 1986 LUC approval — 236 acres east of the existing 443-room Turtle Bay hotel — was for expanding the resort primarly with a golf course and 1,000 resort condominiums that the landowner said were needed to achieve critical mass and success.

Another 1,063 condos and 1,450 hotel rooms also were part of the expansion plan but were designated for land already zoned for urban use at the resort.

Defend Oahu is seeking to invalidate the LUC decision to allow development on the 236 acres, which were once reserved for agriculture use.

The updated expansion plan calls for adding 750 residences and 625 hotel units that could be condo-hotel or time-share units. Some of the residences would be on the 236-acre site.

Replay Resorts has said the new development plan with 60 percent fewer hotel and condo units is a compromise to balance community concerns with the financial needs of the resort owners.

The company aims to start construction next year on a 375-unit time-share and 225 residences along Turtle Bay and Kawela Bay on land outside of the 236-acre portion of the property involving the LUC approval.

Construction of the estimated $770 million project is projected to take 10 years.