Pineapple has been gone for over a decade, and vegetable crops disappeared this year. Now, fallow fields between Mililani and Waipio are about to produce homes in a $2 billion project called Koa Ridge in Central Oahu.

Castle & Cooke Hawaii plans a ceremonial groundbreaking this morning for an initial piece of its 3,500-home project, which has been planned since the mid-1990s and struggled through three state regulatory proceedings as well as two Hawaii Supreme Court challenges.

“We have been committed to Koa Ridge for more than 20 years,” said Harry Saunders, president of the development firm. “We’re glad to be starting.”

Saunders, who discussed the long-anticipated start for the master-planned community with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser earlier this week, said building the first homes should begin late next year, following infrastructure construction. The first homes should be finished by mid-2019.

Completing Koa Ridge is expected to take about 10 years and also include a hospital, hotel, elementary school, light industrial park and about 500,000 square feet of space for stores, restaurants and other commercial uses on 576 acres.

To reach today’s start, Castle & Cooke survived a daunting regulatory experience in which the project was challenged by opponents and stopped twice by state court rulings.

Like other plans to build thousands of homes on prime farmland in Central and Leeward Oahu in past decades, Koa Ridge was contentious.

Opponents largely decried the negative impacts on traffic and water along with the loss of prime farmland that provides green open space and can contribute to the local food supply.

Castle & Cooke in past public hearings touted how new homes are needed for Hawaii’s growing population, how 2,500 jobs would be created in its new community and how the Koa Ridge site is inside a city-designated boundary where urban growth is directed. The developer also promised to relocate agriculture on the site to farmland near Wahiawa for tenant Aloun Farms, which completed its move earlier this year.

Supporters of Koa Ridge included three state agencies — the Department of Agriculture, Office of Planning and Department of Transportation — plus the city Department of Planning and Permitting.

Getting ultimate permission to build, however, wasn’t easy.

Castle & Cooke began planning Koa Ridge as a bigger project on 1,248 acres in the mid-1990s as its onetime sister company Dole Food moved toward ceasing pineapple farming on the site. In 2000, the company petitioned the state Land Use Commission to reclassify the agricultural land for urban use.

The LUC approved part of the plan covering 760 acres in 2002, and Castle & Cooke projected that construction would start in 2007.

However, the Sierra Club sued to overturn the ruling on grounds that the developer should have produced an environmental assessment prior to LUC review. Castle & Cooke intended to complete the assessment after the LUC decision and before City Council consideration for zoning. But a Circuit Court judge ruled against the developer in 2003, and the Hawaii Supreme Court upheld that decision in 2006.

The second go-round for Koa Ridge at the LUC took place in 2008 after Castle & Cooke revised its plan and completed an environmental impact statement. The LUC approved the project in 2010. This time the Sierra Club challenged the validity of one vote from the nine-member commission.

The initial LUC vote during a decision-making hearing was 7-1. But one month later the vote was 6-0 to adopt a final written order because two commissioners were absent and one was recused.

Under LUC rules, six votes are needed for land use changes. The Sierra Club argued that the vote from one commissioner, Duane Kanuha, wasn’t valid because his term had expired in 2009. Then-Gov. Linda Lingle kept Kanuha on the commission as a holdover, but the state Senate rejected Kanuha for a second term before the Koa Ridge vote. A Circuit Court judge sided with the Sierra Club in 2011.

Castle & Cooke tangled with the Sierra Club once more over Koa Ridge in a third round of LUC hearings and in court.

After a favorable 7-0 LUC decision in 2012, the Sierra Club along with then-Sen. Clayton Hee appealed in court largely on grounds that the commission breached a state constitutional mandate to preserve agricultural lands and erroneously concluded that Koa Ridge was necessary for urban growth. Last year, the Hawaii Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that sided with Castle & Cooke.

Saunders said the setbacks led to better Koa Ridge designs. But he also said delays contributed to Oahu’s housing shortage and have made homes costlier given that construction costs doubled since the LUC’s first approval.

“That definitely doubled the price of the homes,” he said. “The longer we delay building homes, the higher the prices will go.”

Home prices at Koa Ridge are projected to range from the high $300,000s to the low $900,000s. Under an agreement with the city, 30 percent, or 1,050 homes, must be affordable to moderate-income households.

The first year of home production at Koa Ridge is projected to turn out 170 homes, but that should grow to about 350 in 2020 and then stabilize at about 400 homes annually in 2021 and beyond, Saunders said.

Other planned pieces of the project include big-box and smaller retail stores developed in 2019, followed by construction on an area with integrated commercial and residential uses in 2021.

A second phase of Koa Ridge called Castle & Cooke Waiawa includes 1,500 homes and a school on 192 acres. But that is dependent on development of an adjacent property known as Waiawa Ridge, owned by Kamehameha Schools, where plans for building 12,000 homes are uncertain.