High court allows Koa Ridge project to proceed

Homes are expected to start sprouting in place of farm crops in Central Oahu in 2018, after Hawaii’s highest court paved the way Wednesday for the controversial Koa Ridge development project to proceed.

The Hawaii Supreme Court issued a 4-1 decision allowing developer Castle & Cooke Hawaii Inc. to move ahead with an initial phase of 3,500 homes in the master-planned community between Waipio and Mililani.

The decision ends more than three years of litigation and is the latest round of legal challenges going back more than a decade. The decision was welcomed by Castle & Cooke, which previously suffered unfavorable court rulings that derailed two earlier versions of Koa Ridge plans.

“We are very pleased with today’s Supreme Court ruling that will allow Castle & Cooke to move forward with its long anticipated Koa Ridge master-planned community,” Harry Saunders, the company’s president, said in a statement.

Opponents of the project, which included the Sierra Club Hawaii Chapter and former state Sen. Clayton Hee, expressed disappointment with the ruling.

“We are certainly disappointed,” said Eric Seitz, an attorney who represented the environmental group and Hee in the case. “(The ruling) basically condemns generations of people who live in the state to the loss of the most valuable agricultural land in the state.”

The issue of farming was the crux of the case.

Koa Ridge is planned on 768 acres once planted in pineapple and more recently farmed largely by local produce grower Aloun Farms. Landowner Castle & Cooke said the estimated $2.2 billion project with 5,000 homes, a hotel, medical campus, retail stores, parks and two schools was necessary to accommodate population growth and would provide needed jobs.

The company sought approval from the state Land Use Commission to convert the property from agricultural to urban use in 2011.

The Sierra Club, Hee and Richard Poirier, the longtime chairman of the Mililani Neighborhood Board, contested the plan at Land Use Commission hearings largely over the loss of prime farmland, which they contended was necessary for the state to become more self-sufficient in its food supply, and negative traffic impacts.

Castle & Cooke committed to lease 335 acres near Wahiawa to Aloun along with an option for an additional 333 acres to compensate for displacing the farm from 446 acres at the Koa Ridge site it leases. Castle & Cooke also said urban development was appropriate because the site is within the city’s urban growth boundary, outside of which lies farmland designated for protection.

The LUC, after hearing from expert witnesses and attorneys on both sides, approved Koa Ridge in 2012 with general support from the state Office of Planning and the city Department of Planning and Permitting.

The Sierra Club and Hee appealed to state Circuit Court on grounds that the commission’s decision erroneously concluded that Koa Ridge was necessary for urban growth and that the LUC breached a constitutional mandate to preserve agricultural lands. The opponents also argued that the state failed to establish rules designating important agricultural lands. Castle & Cooke won the initial appeal, and that ruling was upheld by the state’s high court Wednesday.

Specifically, the appeal contended that the LUC violated a section of the Hawaii Constitution that calls for preserving agricultural land and that it should have adopted rules to designate important agricultural land under a 2005 law enacted as Act 183 before deciding whether to urbanize the Koa Ridge site.

The majority high court opinion said the LUC properly weighed evidence during its hearings and considered the loss of productive farmland. The decision also noted that the city has no intention of designating the property as important ag land because it’s within the urban growth boundary.

“The appellants fail to carry their burden of showing why the LUC’s decision and order should not be affirmed,” the decision said. “The LUC in this case properly reclassified Castle & Cooke’s property from the agricultural land use district to the urban land use district.”

Justice Richard Pollack dissented, saying the case should be remanded to the LUC to do over because the commission’s written conclusions of law failed to state that its decision doesn’t violate the law governing important ag land, but the other justices considered this a “harmless” error because the commission made separate findings pertaining to important ag land.

Seitz said in his view the four justices who sided with Castle & Cooke — Mark Recktenwald, Paula Nakayama, Sabrina McKenna and Circuit Judge Mark Browning — don’t interpret the Constitution as meaning what it says, which to him is an outrage.

The majority opinion closely mirrors a similar decision the Hawaii Supreme Court made in December regarding the 11,750-home Ho‘opili project in Ewa by developer D.R. Horton.

Horton began doing some initial grading work about two weeks ago on the former sugar cane land also largely farmed by Aloun, though a formal groundbreaking ceremony is planned for this summer after the developer obtains permits for roads and other infrastructure plans.

The Sierra Club and Hee were also the challengers in the Ho‘opili court case.

For Koa Ridge, the defeat for the Sierra Club followed victories the organization had previously that twice stopped earlier versions of the Castle & Cooke project.

In the first instance, the LUC approved Koa Ridge in 2002. But the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit that contended an environmental assessment should have been done prior to LUC review. Castle & Cooke, which intended to complete the assessment after the LUC decision but before City Council consideration for zoning, lost that case in a 2003 Circuit Court decision that was upheld in 2006 by the Hawaii Supreme Court.

After revising its plan and completing an environmental impact statement, Castle & Cooke returned to the LUC in 2008 and obtained approval in 2010. However, the Sierra Club sued again, this time contending that one LUC member improperly cast a vote.

The commission approved Koa Ridge in 2010 on a preliminary 7-1 vote, but adopting a final order happened shortly after on a 6-0 vote, including one vote from a holdover commissioner that a Circuit Court judge said was invalid. Because six votes from the nine-member commission are needed for land use changes, the approval for Koa Ridge was reversed in 2011.

Now it appears Koa Ridge has overcome the legal blockages. The company has all major discretionary approvals it needs to proceed, including zoning granted by the City Council in 2013. A second phase with 1,500 homes was conditionally approved by the LUC provided that infrastructure is delivered to the site.

Castle & Cooke anticipates starting construction next year and delivering its first homes in the fourth quarter of 2018.

“Koa Ridge has now received full approvals from both the LUC and City and County of Honolulu, and we look forward to moving ahead with our efforts to provide new housing and job opportunities for Hawaii families,” Saunders said. “We would like to recognize and thank all who have supported Koa Ridge and waited for over a decade to have the opportunity to make Koa Ridge their home.”