Farmers say Hawaii-Kai fees may force them out of area

Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.

Koko Head farmers will be forced to give up farming because the development costs in the Hawaii-Kai area are too high, the City Council was told yesterday.

Harry N. Okabe, president of the Koko Head Farm Bureau Center, also complained that the Hawaii-Kai developers have not kept commitments to the farmers.

He said Hawaii-Kai originally had agreed to develop the agricultural land so farmers could relocate there when displaced by other projects in the Hawaii-Kai area.

He said the off-site cost was to be borne by industrial, commercial and residential areas and not by the farmers.

In the amended Hawaii-Kai development plan, two agricultural areas are proposed: 87 acres in the Kamilonui area and 31 acres in the Lunalilo area.

Okabe said Hawaii-Kai later informed the farmers it could not develop the Kamilonui agricultural site because of economic reasons and that the farmers had to do this job themselves.

He said truck crop farmers then pooled their resources and formed the Kamilonui Farmers Association to undertake the development of the agricultural site.

But, he said, Hawaii-Kai is asking the farmers to pay the off-site cost at 10 cents a square foot.

He said this would amount to $4,356 an acre for off-site improvements, which, when added to the on-site cost, would bring the total development cost to nearly $8,000 an acre.

"This would create such a hardship on the farmers that they would be forced to give up the land development," he said.

Okabe said the farmers had no specific objections to the new Hawaii-Kai development plan, which is before the City Council for action.

Councilman Frank F. Fasi sympathized with Okabe, but he saw little that the Council could do. He said the farmers had to iron out the cost problem with the developers. The Council then had the new plan explained by Robert L. Hart, of John C. Warnecke and Associates, the firm that prepared the Hawaii-Kai plan.

The Hawaii-Kai blueprint envisions the development of 6,000 acres for commercial, resort, industrial, residential and agricultural uses for the next 15 to 20 years.