Bill targets disputed Kakaako roads again

State lawmakers are taking another crack at resolving a flap over two brothers charging for parking along Kakaako streets to which they claim ownership despite decades of public use.

Two House committees advanced a bill Wednesday that would require private owners of certain streets in Kakaako to bring their roads up to city standards, thereby mandating costly upgrades for features such as sewers, sidewalks and underground utilities.

House Bill 2275, introduced by House Speaker Scott Saiki, is seen by some as a crafty but potentially problematic strategy to end a dispute involving many Kakaako residents and small-business owners who complain about parking and the quality of eight roads controlled by brothers Calvert and Cedric Chun of Kakaako Land Co.

Three times in the past two years, the Legislature has ushered bills targeting the same issue into ineffective laws. This attempt has mainly garnered support, though there also are a couple major concerns.

HB 2275 proposes that privately owned streets within development districts governed by the Hawaii Community Development Authority, mainly Kakaako and Kalaeloa, conform to city construction and maintenance standards if they have been open to public use for at least six months. The bill requires the owner to meet the standards, and allows anyone to sue the owner to enforce compliance and recover legal costs if they win.

A couple of Imperial Plaza condominium tower residents endorsed the bill along with the state Department of Transportation and owners of a few Kakaako businesses including Stewart’s Auto Service, The Car Store, U. Okada & Co. Ltd. and Macdonald & Porter Inc.

John Price said in written testimony that privately owned streets in Kakaako feature enormous potholes, tripping hazards, freestyle parking and lack of cleaning.

“All this and more is easily seen on a simple tour of Kakaako, where streets that are claimed by a private owner show no signs of having been cared for in a decade or more,” he wrote. “That doesn’t stop the owners from charging outrageous rent to park on their roads, under penalty of being towed, while they pocket the proceeds. Having a legal remedy to require such roads to be properly maintained will benefit the public and is totally fair to the owners.”

HCDA, the state agency that controls zoning in Kakaako, noted that the bill would apply to several private street owners, including Kamehameha Schools and Ward Village developer Howard Hughes Corp.

Ross Sasamura, director of the city Department of Facility Maintenance, said his department “strongly opposes” the bill out of concern it could apply to the city.

“The city and its taxpayers will incur hundreds of millions of dollars in costs to comply with this measure,” he said in written testimony.

Sasamura also noted that many businesses and residents will lose existing use of street frontages and potentially part of their land if streets need to be widened to meet standards.

“The long-lasting financial, operational and functional impacts of this measure are detrimental to the city, property owners, businesses and residents,” he wrote.

Rep. Cynthia Thielen, a retired attorney, questioned whether allowing the public to file lawsuits to force a private street owner to comply with city roadway standards is lawful. “There are sort of little flags going off in my head,” she said.

In a move to narrow the bill’s application, Rep. Ryan Yamane, as chairman of the House Water and Land Committee, proposed amending it so the bill applies only to any private street owner in an HCDA district who has allowed public use of a street for at least six months and exercises ownership rights “for financial gain or profit.”

Yamane’s committee along with the House Committee on Transportation passed the bill with the amendment.

If the bill clears other committees in the House and Senate and becomes law, it would be the fourth law attempting to address the situation with Kakaako Land, which started charging for parking in 2010 and claims to have bought whole or partial segments of Queen, Kawaiahao, Ilaniwai, Waimanu, Curtis, Dreier, Cummins and Kamakee streets in 1985 from the last heir of a man who subdivided parts of Kakaako more than 100 years ago.

In 2016, lawmakers created a law that declared a 1903 Territory of Hawaii resolution that expressed intent to accept ownership of the streets as a retroactive conveyance of the property to the state. This law didn’t result in what was intended.

Last year, the Legislature established a disputed road resolution process by law, but it doesn’t appear to apply to Kakaako Land roads. The process was created to succeed a 2016 law calling for the formation of a disputed roads commission that was never created.

Meanwhile, the city is exploring condemnation of the streets, and a lawsuit filed in 2014 by seven Kakaako businesses challenging Kakaako Land’s ownership claim is scheduled for trial in July.