Ho’opili plan now includes urban farming

"Urban agriculture" is a new — and unique — piece of the 11,750-home Ho’opili community proposed for the Ewa Plain.

But opponents of the project questioned the concept’s feasibility Friday at a hearing on the plan held by the state Land Use Commission.

Ho’opili’s developer, the local Schuler Division of Texas-based D.R. Horton, needs the approval of the commission before it can proceed with the plan to build about as many homes as in Hawaii Kai or Mililani. Friday was the second day of hearings on Schuler’s renewed application for Ho’opili. The nine-member commission is likely to vote on the project within a year.

Schuler has been promoting the urban agriculture concept in part to make the controversial project more palatable given that commercial farms will be uprooted from the 1,554-acre site regarded as some of the best farmland on Oahu.

Schuler introduced more details of the concept Friday, and a planning expert who oversaw the production of a "sustainability plan" for Ho’opili that includes the urban agriculture elements testified about the developer’s effort to have farming continue on 251 acres, or 16 percent, of the property.

"Farming’s not leaving here," Schuler’s expert, Tim Van Meter of Colorado-based urban design firm Van Meter Williams Pollack LLP, told commissioners. "It’s changing to a new paradigm."

Ho’opili’s urban ag plan is divided into three parts. The biggest piece is 159 acres spread throughout the community for lease to commercial farmers. Another 84 acres would be available to grow food in the yards of single-family homes. And eight acres would be community gardens.

However, some participants in the hearing expressed doubt about how much of the urban ag plan would be realized if Ho’opili is approved and built.

A representative of the Sierra Club asked Van Meter whether areas at Ho’opili proposed for commercial farming are suitable for growing crops.

Van Meter said that would need to be studied.

The Sierra Club also pointed out that Ho’opili’s commercial farm areas were previously designated for open buffer space in an original plan rejected by the LUC in 2009 because the plan wasn’t properly split into phases.

It was also unclear Friday how much of the new commercial farm space, which includes a strip up against the H-1 freeway, is presently farmed.

LUC member Ron Heller questioned how viable commercial farming would be in some areas of Ho’opili designated as drainage areas. Van Meter suggested that would have to be studied, as well.

Heller also asked how certain it would be that 84 acres end up being farmed on home sites.

The 84 acres for home farming represents the maximum area available to grow crops within Ho’opili’s single-family and lower-density home sites.

Van Meter said it is unknown what percentage of homeowners would grow crops in their yards or contract with a commercial farmer to grow crops in their yards. But he said irrigation, soil and references to farm contractors would be provided.

The state Office of Planning, another party to the hearing, asked to what extent Schuler would ensure that farming takes place to the degree being planned.

Van Meter said executing the plan is Schuler’s intention but that no certainty could be ensured.

"Wouldn’t that just be another way of saying, ‘Trust me’?" asked Office of Planning attorney Bryan Yee.

"This is our intent," Van Meter repeated.

Van Meter, in response to other questions, said different Schuler representatives would be able to comment more on Ho’opili’s urban agriculture plan. That testimony would come later in the hearings, which could stretch over several months.

Van Meter noted that present farming on the site, primarily 1,100 acres farmed by Aloun Farms, would be phased out slowly over Ho’opili’s estimated 20-year development timetable.

The Ho’opili plan projects that land being farmed will fall from about 1,500 acres presently to 1,300 acres in 2015, then to 698 acres in 2020. At full development in 2030, 251 acres comprising the urban ag would remain.

The loss of farmland is a major issue of the Ho’opili project. Other issues include traffic and urban growth.

Schuler officials say Ho’opili should be approved because it’s within the city’s urban growth boundary created to accommodate population growth and protect farmland elsewhere on Oahu from development. The developer also said two planned rail stations on the site and 7,000 jobs tied to commercial pieces of Ho’opili will minimize traffic impacts.

Schuler originally submitted a petition with the LUC to urbanize the site in 2007, but it was rejected two years ago because it wasn’t properly divided into phases.

Approval from six of the LUC’s nine commissioners is needed for Schuler to move ahead with the development.

The next LUC meetings continuing the hearing are tentatively scheduled for Nov. 17 and 18.