Laie plans would ruin rural North Shore

The Honolulu Planning Commission faces a decision that could allow urban sprawl in Oahu’s rural Koolauloa district.

The question it faces is whether to allow a new town to be built on ranch land between Laie and Kahuku.

The commission recently held a public hearing on the draft Koolauloa Sustainable Communities Plan (KSCP). The hearing was the next step in a process that will lead to a vote by the City Council as to whether the draft should be adopted as the guiding document for the future of Koolauloa and, by extension, our interconnected island home.

The commission must review recommendations by the Department of Planning and Permitting (DPP) to drastically change the community’s version of the plan.

The community plan focused on sustainability and built upon the original premise that Koolauloa should remain an agricultural, open-space recreational area for all of Oahu. Members of a diverse, district-wide Planning Advisory Committee (PAC) assembled by DPP drafted a plan that reflected the wishes of all communities in Koolauloa.

Changes proposed by DPP focused instead on urbanization for the rural area and reflected the wishes of a developer in a single community. If accepted, these changes will have a profoundly negative effect on the quality of life of every resident of Oahu.

The most contentious aspect of the DPP draft of the KSCP is a massive development proposal known as "Envision Laie." This proposal is predicated upon a supposed need to expand the campus of Brigham Young University-Hawaii (BYUH). Development would entail construction of a new town between Laie and Kahuku in the ahupuaa known as Malaekahana. The new town would be larger than both Laie and Kahuku and would include a commercial center, a light industrial park, churches, a school, market housing and "affordable" housing units.

Proponents of this expansion give no data or figures to support their argument as to why BYUH must grow to be "economically viable," nor do they explain why agricultural land in Malaekahana must be up-zoned to accommodate this growth.

Student density at BYUH is the lowest of any university in the state, lower than even the main BYU campus in Provo, Utah. There is ample land for expansion within the existing footprint of the campus.

Developer Hawaii Reserves Inc. (HRI) — the development arm of the Mormon Church — has been unable to explain why Oahu taxpayers should subsidize this expansion, arguing that development is needed to address a crisis in affordable housing. What it doesn’t mention is that this is a manufactured crisis. Permission and zoning changes were granted to HRI to build affordable housing on land surrounding BYUH in Laie during the 1990s and the developer failed to do so.

Before HRI began the frenzied call for urbanization, the KSCP was a plan that residents felt could meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Now it is not.

When HRI — which had representation on the PAC — could not sell its plan to the other communities in Koolauloa, it circumvented public process and met behind closed doors with former Mayor Mufi Hannemann’s DPP director, David Tanoue. The public plan was thrown out and DPP made changes based on the wishes of the developer.

It is crucial for planning commissioners to reject DPP’s changes and reincorporate the needs of residents from all of Koolauloa. The Kaaawa Community Association, the Punaluu Community Association, the Hauula Community Association and the Kahaluu Neighborhood Board have all taken positions against "Envision Laie."

Residents from across the island understand that what happens in Laie doesn’t stay in Laie. Impacts from this unsustainable development proposal would adversely affect us all.