Drew Stotesbury admits he’s moved across a few career tracks (“I get bored easily,” he said) in a career that ranged from an educational background in finance, and assignments in development and the hotel/hospitality industry.

But the chief executive of Turtle Bay Resort also will admit that the current job fits rather well into all those categories. At 55, Stotesbury said he enjoys challenges, and the Turtle Bay controversy was a big one.

“It was broken and needed to be fixed,” he said, “and that’s what I like doing.”

He and his wife, Kim MacKay (their son, now 28, was out of the house), moved to Hawaii for a year in 2010.

That’s when he took over, while the environmental tangle over the Turtle Bay planned expansion was still in knots. Stotesbury works for Replay Resorts, the management group that represented Turtle Bay Resort in the negotiations.

Even before the legal challenges were settled and all sides had agreed to a conservation deal, the couple had been splitting their time between Hawaii and their home on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, where he enjoys running, boating and other outdoorsy pastimes.

The state, city, the Army and the nonprofit Trust for Public land last week collectively paid $45 million to Turtle Bay Resort to protect 629 acres of North Shore land from development.

Under the deal, Turtle Bay will hold off on a residential area adjacent to the two new hotel sites, until at least the first quarter of 2018.

If environmental groups and other stakeholders can raise the funds for a further settlement, the complex site also would be preserved.

Other than that, the agreement is locked in for the long term, he said. He recalled one meeting with environmental stakeholders.

“After a couple of hours, one of them said to me, ‘You know, Drew, I kind of feel like I can trust you.’ And my reply was, ‘That’s really nice, but please don’t. Please, anything we can agree on, let’s make sure we get it in writing and registered on title, so that if I’m not here, or if the ownership group I represent is not here, what we’ve agreed to prevails.’

“I can be as earnest as I like,” he said, “but I won’t be there forever. I wasn’t there 30 years ago and I won’t be there 30 years from now.”

QUESTION: What is the resort’s timeline for the development now?

ANSWER: This may sound silly, but we’re planning to plan. Until we had this behind us we didn’t really want to invest further, planning for the configuration we have now, versus a different configuration.

We have three development sites, one of which we’ve agreed to kind of keep in abeyance for, at this point, just over two years …

But the two hotel sites on either side of the existing hotel, we are just starting a process right now to do more detailed site planning, to understand the building massing and product mix and the amenities and everything else we would want to program into a future development. I expect that process to be finished by the new year, at which point we will be sitting down with our owners and saying, “OK, here’s where we are and how do we go forward?”

Q: What would follow that? Any environmental assessments?

A: No, happily that’s behind us — that was the big push that, in many ways, led to this whole conservation deal happening.

What we would be doing next is detailed site planning, architectural planning, market planning, and then if all the conditions are right, we would seek excavation and building permits from the city.

Q: Are we looking down the road two years? A year? How long before construction?

A: I’d rather answer that in terms of what is possible. And I would say it’s possible that something could start within a year. …

Q: And the delay for the residential project being held in abeyance?

A: It was a three-year undertaking that started in February-March. That abeyance was to preserve the land as it currently is. Give those environmental groups an opportunity to fundraise to preserve that land as well.

Q: What amenities have been committed to in the development?

A: Well, there are amenities committed to in the unilateral agreement. That includes an oceanfront walkway that’s finished to a reasonable standard. It includes providing beach access, beach parking, beach showers at every development site.

It includes providing a park at the very western edge of our property, now the city’s property at Kawela Bay.

And it also includes providing a day-care center on the development. That goes back 30 years to the unilateral agreement.

Q: The day-care center is for employees?

A: It’s not specified in the unilateral agreement, but my guess is it would be highly used by employees, just because it would be most convenient for them.

Within each development we would be doing an analysis of what onsite amenities are most appropriate — certainly pool, hot tub, things like that, would resonate.

This is just an example, it’s illustrative, it’s not something I would suggest we’re thinking of, but a lot of people in Honolulu, as you know, love the North Shore, wish they had a beach house on the North Shore. And if that is a market that were trying to entice to buy real estate, then what sort of amenities would a Honolulu native want, versus someone coming from the mainland? They may want board storage — it could be quite different altogether.

So those are the types of analyses we’ll be undertaking, and it’s all iterative as we determine the market — what are we selling, who are we offering it to and what do they want, is what it kind of comes down to.

Then in addition to that, we had in our initial plan, the proposed action, the 1,375-unit plan, allocated 10 acres for a small commercial gathering place. Now that particular vision may not work as well with the reduced unit count, 725 units instead of 1,375, but some commercial offering will be part of our programming, and that’s something else we’re working on….

Q: This would be retail?

A: Yeah, retail, food and beverage, possibly some services as well.

Q: Some people would say the conservation deal works out well for the Turtle Bay (Resort) because they get $45 million and most of the land is still theirs, with improvements that makes it more marketable, too. Would you say it’s a good deal?

A: I think it’s a fair deal for everybody … I can assure you, the $45 million is less than the fair market value of what we’re giving up.

So, are we kind of riding off into the sunset laughing, going “Ha ha! We’ve really won the deal here”? No, we’re not.

But I am saying it’s a fair deal. That’s the essence of a good deal — it’s one where each party feels a little uneasy about it.

We on our side, I can assure you, feel that if we had developed Kawela Bay, we would have made more money. Developing Kawela Bay, as lovely as it is as an amenity, I can promise you as a developer, it’s worth more developed than as an amenity to the remaining resort lands.

And from the community’s point of view as represented by the state, city and the Army, they paid less than fair value, but they paid more than they probably felt comfortable with to preserve something that’s pretty special, and to resolve 30 years of controversy and acrimony.

And some would say the wrong decision was made 30 years ago … but there was a coordinated effort by the state and the city to urbanize pockets of Oahu. So the zoning of the resort, people often look at the city and say, “How could they have done that?” It was done in concert with plans to upgrade Kamehameha Highway. You can’t really do one without the other.

And that was part of the controversy — people were very concerned about traffic. People didn’t want Kamehameha Highway to go three or four lanes. Frankly, it couldn’t in many cases because the right-of-ways aren’t there.

But there was a coordinated effort many, many years ago to drive economic development across the island. It was a good plan that wasn’t executed. So this helps to fix that.

Q: But that plan certainly wouldn’t play now, would it? When it wasn’t developed, economic conditions changed.

A: Yeah, it was a combination of factors. Certainly there were people in the community against it, there were economic cycles that conspired against it happening. I’m sure there were political cycles that conspired against it happening.

And the reality is, here we are 30 years later, and you still had this thing on the books that a lot of people disagreed with, but it was still there. And our owners bought this land in good faith with certain zoning rights in place.

As I said, this is a fair outcome.

All that being said, why did we do this, gosh, 5-1/2 years ago, when I started? I made it my mission to sit down with the community and try to understand what their true interests were …

There’s no one point of view. For every person I’ve met that’s against this development, I can tell you another person I’ve met that’s for it, because they want jobs for their families.

So I think that’s the other thing that we feel very good about. This deal solves that problem, greatly mitigates the impacts people were concerned about, takes the 3,500 units down to 725, but still provides significant new employment, basically doubling the employment that’s there.

Q: Do you think this conservation deal is a model that can be applicable to other projects, or was it too specific to these circumstances?

A: Oh, I think there’s applicability. I don’t think you’ll carbon-copy it, but there certainly could be cases where development rights are forfeited in return for some consideration. And if you’re working with governments, that sometimes could be financial. It could also be the land — land swaps …

But I do think, I haven’t studied it, but it’s probably a first where resort-zoned land is being preserved. Typically it’s land that’s not zoned for an intensive use that gets preserved, which is still a valuable undertaking.

But this is, in terms of the urgency, when you can preserve something that’s zoned for development, I think it has a higher conservation value.