Council OKs 350-foot height limit for Kuhio tower

A developer’s much-debated request to raise the height limit on a Kuhio Avenue hotel-condominium tower received a 9-0 approval from the Honolulu City Council on Wednesday, despite opposition.

California-based PACREP2 LLC will now get to build its 280-unit tower at 2139 Kuhio Ave. up to 350 feet, instead of the standard 300 feet allowed within the Waikiki Special Design District, after the Council approved Resolution 14-38.

Council members and city officials said repeatedly that the resolution technically is supposed to hinge only on how the height increase would affect the view plane of someone looking from Punchbowl Lookout to Diamond Head, and from Fort DeRussy to the Koolau Mountains.

But opponents of the height variance and the project in general raised a host of other concerns about potential impacts the project could have, from traffic to the loss of hotel jobs. Council members, in the end, addressed some of those issues.

For instance, PACREP2 is agreeing to build the tower no closer than 75 feet from a first tower that received a similar height variance last year.

Council Zoning Chairman Ikaika Anderson said he would have liked to require the developer to provide cash for community impacts, but he was advised by city attorneys that doing so would be illegal.

The project at 2139 Kuhio still will need to obtain a Waikiki Special District use permit from the Department of Planning and Permitting before it can proceed.

City Planning Director George Atta said many of the concerns opponents raised, including traffic and parking, can be addressed then. Public testimony will be accepted and there will be at least one public hearing.

Anderson raised eyebrows before Wednesday’s vote when he announced he had recently returned about $10,000 in campaign contributions made "in the last month" to his congressional campaign by PACREP2, employees, family members and associates.

Anderson told the Hono­lulu Star-Advertiser after the vote that he does not suspect there was anything illegal about the contributions, but was concerned about the appearance of the timing.

PACREP2 officials could not be reached for comment after the meeting. Several other Council members said they don’t think their campaigns received similar contributions from PACREP2 or its associates.

Project opponents earlier said that PACREP2 employees, family members, affiliated companies and others tied to the project made contributions to the campaign coffers of Anderson, Waikiki area Councilman Stanley Chang and Mayor Kirk Caldwell. All three denied the contributions had any effect on their decisions.

Opponents said the developers misled the public and the city, had planned two towers all along, and were guilty of illegally "segmenting" the approvals of the two projects so people could not see the full impact they would have. It also avoided the need for an environmental impact statement, they said.

The first tower, at 2121 Kuhio, is being built by PACREP LLC, which contains the key principal players as PACREP2 but has a slightly different roster of investors. Both are affiliated with entrepreneur Jason Grosfeld and the Martell Capital Group, which does business as Irongate.

Grosfeld and Irongate also developed the Trump International Hotel and Tower and the Watermark in Waikiki.

The Council on Wednesday also voted 7-2 to approve Bill 1, requiring the Caldwell administration to set aside parking stalls in the Capitol District for food trucks and lunchwagon vendors who can bid for permits giving them exclusive use. Under a late change to the bill, trucks without permits would be banned from being in the Capitol District from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. during the two-year pilot project.

City Transportation Services Director Michael Formby said he was hoping one to five permits could be issued.

Members Breene Harimoto and Joey Manahan voted no, noting that no vendors had come forward to express opinions. They said they worried the bill would do more to harm operators than help them.