‘Monster house’ builder obtains permit for Date Street property

The company that built nearly an entire two-story, two-family house in Kapahulu without a valid building permit — and then later while under a stop-work order — finally got its permit from the city last month and is now undergoing inspections by the city’s Department of Planning and Permitting.

The permit could render moot Resolution 18-212, a measure moving through the Honolulu City Council that urges DPP to immediately “serve an order” to those responsible for the structure to demolish it.

Technically, the building is no longer an unpermitted structure, DPP Acting Director Kathy Sokugawa told the Council Zoning and Housing Committee on Oct. 18.

The 2930 Date St. site has become a symbol for department critics who argue the agency has been ineffective in enforcing building and land-use laws while, at the same time, has been slow to meet the demand for permits by builders and architects during an islandwide housing crisis.

City records show Brilliant Construction Co. received a building permit Oct. 11 for the 6,000-­ square-foot property across from Ala Wai Golf Course. Brilliant Construction paid $17,660 for the permit and listed work valued at $1,125,200. The work was listed as “a new, two-family detached dwelling,” a new concrete brick wall and a 6-foot-high vinyl fence with gates.

Because the contractor now has a permit, the company and owner are no longer being assessed fines of $1,050 a day, DPP spokesman Curtis Lum said. The project had racked up $218,700 in fines for violations as of Oct. 10, the last day it did not have a building permit, he said.

The fines have not been paid by Brilliant Construction, the project’s general contractor, or property owner the Gary Chan Trust, and the two notice-of-violation cases against them remain open, Lum said.

Sokugawa told the Zoning Committee that no certificate of occupancy will be issued until the completed project passes various inspections. It’s unclear how long they will take.

“There are investigations going on to make sure they comply with the permit,” she said. “If things are not according to the approved plans, then they could be issued another notice of violation.”

Construction must be done according to approved plans, Lum said. During that time, “our inspectors may ask that walls be opened up in order to check electrical wiring and other work that is not visible or accessible,” he said.

“If our inspectors determine that the construction did not follow the approved plans, the owner will be required to submit new plans that conform with the work, or the unpermitted work may be removed to meet the approved plans,” he said. “If this is not done within a specified time, we will issue a notice of violation and revoke the permit.”

Despite learning that Brilliant Contracting had obtained a building permit, the committee advanced the resolution, and it now will likely be up for a final vote Nov. 14 even though it’s unclear what force of law it might have.

Councilman Trevor Ozawa, who authored the resolution, said the city needs to “send a message to the community that we don’t stand for this and our rules will be enforced.”

Ozawa said that while he appreciates the DPP’s long-held philosophy that housing already constructed shouldn’t be torn down if it can be made compliant, he doesn’t want other owners and contractors to consider building without a permit or while under a stop-work order based on what they saw happening with the Date Street project.

Efforts to contact Brilliant Construction owner Benny Lee for this story were unsuccessful. In the past, Lee told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that he proceeded without a building permit because the wait for the approval was making the project unfeasible for both his company and his client.

City records showed a building permit application for the structure was submitted Nov. 15, 2016. Sokugawa previously said the permit could not be issued because of outstanding checklist items asked of the applicant.

The proliferation of large-scale residential structures, dubbed monster houses, in some older Oahu neighborhoods has drawn criticism against DPP. Critics of the large-scale houses say they are unsightly, often accompanied by illegal boarding or other unsavory activities and tax sewer capacity, surface street parking and other city infrastructure.

Several bills have been introduced by Council members to deal with DPP’s issues in the past two years. The Council last year approved a moratorium for up to two years on building permits for large-scale projects on lands zone for single-family residential uses. During the interim, DPP was to come up with a broader, more long-term law to govern them.

A draft of that DPP proposal, recently reviewed by the city Planning Commission, calls for the floor area ratio, or density, of a single-family structure to be no more than 0.7 percent. The commission recommended that the Council consider a 0.6 FAR.

FAR is determined by dividing the floor area of a structure by the total area of a lot. A 3,500-square-foot house on a 5,000-square-foot lot would have a 0.7 FAR. So a 0.6 FAR requirement would mean a house on the same lot could be no more than 3,000 square feet.

Before the moratorium, FAR was not used to determine the size of a house in single-family zones. Instead, the footprint of a house could not exceed 50 percent of the total lot size.

The 2930 Date St. property is in the apartment zone, which allows for larger buildings, so it technically is not a monster house.

Lee’s complaint about the long time to obtain a building permit from DPP was not isolated, and a group of building industry leaders convinced Council Chairman Ernie Martin to introduce Bill 64, which would require DPP to process building permits for one- and two-family structures within 60 days.

The measure goes before the Zoning Committee on Wednesday.

Last month Mayor Kirk Caldwell announced he had signed Bill 60, which makes violating a city stop-work order a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $2,000, a year in jail or both. It’s unclear whether the measure could be applied with the Date Street project.