The City Council Zoning and Planning Committee gave a preliminary thumbs up Thursday to one landscape-changing development scheme and a thumbs down to another one.
The committee heard from scores of proponents and opponents on both plans during a meeting that ran about seven hours.
A rezoning request for D.R. Horton Schuler Division’s 11,750-home Hoopili project in West Oahu advanced 5-0. The project, on existing agricultural lands between Kapolei and Ewa, is the largest rezoning request to come before the Council in at least two decades. Bill 3 is now scheduled to be taken up by the full Council for the second of three readings on Wednesday.
But Hawaii Reserve Inc.’s plan to develop a section of Malaekahana, between Laie and Kahuku, appears to be in serious jeopardy. The committee voted 5-0 to delete any reference to development at Malaekahana from the draft Koolau Loa Sustainable Communities Plan, a broad, long-range guide for land use planners to follow.
On top of the committee vote, Council Chairman Ernie Martin said he will hold off on any future votes of Bill 47 (2013), adopting a new Koolau Loa plan as proposed by the city Department of Planning and Permitting, until the agency first wraps up its work on revisions to the Oahu General Plan, the document that is supposed to guide the regional plans.
The committee actually began hearing testimony on Hoopili on Monday night, went into recess and then took up the issue again Thursday morning.
As in the past, supporters focused on the need for housing in a tight real estate climate, and the need for both construction jobs and build-out of the West Oahu community. Opponents questioned the placing of the project on 1,554 acres of what has been classified as prime agricultural land, and the negative impact such a large-scale development would have along a corridor that already backs up during rush-hour traffic.
Makakilo resident Garrett Takara, a carpenter, said Hoopili would allow many young families to purchase their first homes.
But Nanakuli resident Dixie Kuulei Kulamao suggested traffic was driving her relatives to move to the mainland.
"It’s horrible, it’s nasty, it’s awful," she said.
Council Zoning Chairman Ikaika Anderson recommended approval of the Hoopili rezoning, pointing out that the project is clearly allowed under the urban growth boundary in the 4-decade-old General Plan, "which designated Kapolei and Central-West Oahu to host our second city." Since then all levels of government and private interests have invested hundreds of millions of dollars building up the area.
Rejecting Hoopili would run contrary to that, he said.
"We would lose four decades of planning," he said. "To me Hoopili is a critical … residential component of implementing the Oahu General Plan while protecting our rural areas, including Windward Oahu."
Before the Hoopili vote, all five committee members disclosed potential conflicts of interest. Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission records show that Anderson and Council members Carol Fukunaga, Ann Kobayashi, Joey Manahan and Trevor Ozawa all received contributions since 2010 from Schuler executives and/or affiliates.
Anderson also said he is a longtime friend of Schuler executive Cameron Nekota. Kobayashi said she is friends with both Nekota and his mother.
The committee heard from dozens of people, both pro and con, on the Koolau Loa plan. Nearly all of it was focused on Envision Laie, Hawaii Reserves’ plan to redevelop and expand the Brigham Young University-Hawaii campus and its properties in Laie and beyond.
Longtime area resident Lisa Sing said, "I want my children to continue to grow up here in the same waters and in the same mountains and same community of beautiful people that I call home." The only way that can happen is if affordable homes are built for the community, she said.
"If we’re ‘keeping the country country,’ who are we keeping it country for?"
Many proponents noted that Laie has the highest number of occupants per household on Oahu.
But Hauula resident Steve Gallagher, along with other Envision Laie opponents, pointed out that the Laie Community Association was alone in supporting Malaekahana development while all other community groups in the Koolau Loa region opposed it.
"That emblem behind you says this is the City and County of Honolulu," he said. "This isn’t the Laie board here. This is the Koolau Loa community sustainable plan."
Anderson, who first recommended that Malaekahana development be stricken from the Koolau Loa plan, successfully got his colleagues to move the measure out of the committee Thursday. He said he could support Hoopili, which is within the Urban Growth Boundary of the Ewa community plan, but not support the Hawaii Reserves project, which is outside the Urban Growth Boundary.
Meanwhile, Council Chairman Martin, who represents the Koolau Loa region, said he intends to hold the entire Koolau Loa plan from the full Council calendar until DPP can finish its General Plan and submit that document to the Council for its approval. Because the General Plan is supposed to guide how the other plans are formed, Martin said, it makes sense to at least move it before, or at least concurrently with, the Koolau Loa plan.
Martin also pointed out that the revised plan reduced the Laie portion that Hawaii Reserves already had been allowed to develop by about 200 acres.
DPP Director George Atta said he expects his agency’s draft of a revised General Plan to reach the Council by early fall.
