State Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz estimates he’s given the tour 70 times over the last four years. He has shown political leaders, business people, visiting scholars and just about anyone who will listen the future he sees in the fallow and overgrown farmland. It’s not the same tour over and over, though. There’s new information because the project is taking shape. “It’s starting to pick up because it’s becoming more real,” Dela Cruz says.
Whitmore Project: Next steps
>> Complete the master plan for the Whitmore Agribusiness Tech Park.
>> Purchase available Dole Food Co. lands in Central Oahu.
>> Establish an ag foreign trade zone so Whitmore Project tenants can defer duties on imported goods.
>> Complete a wastewater recycling facility for irrigation.
>> Create ag workforce housing.
>> Install pump-storage hydroelectricity.
The Whitmore Project is a comprehensive plan to bring back farming on former Oahu ag lands and to revitalize the communities of Wahiawa and Whitmore. It is both lofty in its goals and tethered to practicality. The state owns a significant amount of the land, and funds for additional parcels have been released by Gov. David Ige. Dela Cruz has organized numerous government agencies to “cluster” on the project so that things like loans for farmers, a shared processing and packing plant, and workforce housing can be facilitated.
“Kakaako can’t be the only place that’s ‘live, work, play,’” Dela Cruz says.
The state purchased more than 1,700 acres of the former Galbraith estate in Central Oahu in 2012 and has added other parcels in the area to its inventory in the years since. The Agribusiness Development Corp., which is part of the state Department of Agriculture, will award long-term leases (farmers on short or month-to-month leases struggle to invest in their farms because of the uncertainty of their future) and offer rent credits. The plan is to also organize co-ops to share in the cost of equipment and supplies.
There’s a cavernous warehouse on a side street off California Avenue that is sitting empty. The roof leaks and some of the drywall is broken, but the vision for the space is for a vibrant visitor destination and retail store like Hilo’s beautiful Big Island Candies, where you can see how the products are made and shop for what’s new, fresh and locally grown. Dole Plantation visitor center, a few miles down the road, sees 1.5 million visitors a year. Most of those visitors drive right past Wahiawa, but if there’s a retail store, something unique to see and buy and taste, the thought is that they will spend time in the town.
Current discussions about food security, sustainability, the benefits of locally grown produce and the potential loss of high-yield farmlands to housing or resort development are often high on lofty ideas and low on specific, workable, wonky details and actual agreements. The Whitmore Project is different. It’s big but it’s plenty wonky. Part of Dela Cruz’s tour is a rapid-fire lecture on all the agreements that have been worked out for the future, like establishing a foreign trade zone and coordinating with nearby schools to provide ag licensing training, working with the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture to identify the best crops for the area and, most important, how to pay for all of these things.
A question that Dela Cruz often gets and doesn’t much like is, So when will this project be finished?
“This is an incremental build,” he says. “It’s like asking when will tourism end. It’s an evolving process.”
This summer, the first harvest of watermelon and bell pepper came from the Wahiawa Project lands. So it has already begun.
On the NET
>> facebook.com/Whitmore Project.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
