A community-led effort to thwart plans to build a 350-room hotel on the former Coco Palms Resort property on Kauai took a hit after the state Board of Land and Natural Resources last week voted to renew permits on land where development would take place.
After some deliberation, the Land Board on Friday voted to renew annual revocable permits for three
parcels of land in Wailua, thereby clearing an obstacle for developers who want to use the land for a planned hotel and resort. However, the board agreed to vote on the permits again in March, a stipulation that came after the board was inundated with about 150 pages of written testimony against the development.
“I was disappointed that the (permits) were renewed, but I was very happy to see what I believe was a majority of board members expressing concerns and reservations,” said Gary Hooser, president of the board of directors for the Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action and staunch opponent of the hotel.
Most of the members Friday actually supported an initial motion not to renew the three revocable permits. But the board dropped the motion after DLNR staff had expressed concern that the parcels would become
unencumbered, and its maintenance would fall on an already overwhelmed
department.
Even though the three parcels voted on by the board Friday make up less than an acre of the disputed, 48-acre Coco Palms Resort property, the state also owns a 15-acre plot on the site. Opponents have called on the board to revoke its permits on the property.
The ruins of the once-famous Coco Palms Resort sit along busy Kuhio Highway and have mostly sat empty since Hurricane Iniki all but destroyed it in 1992. Development opponents have said the property, which altogether consists of seven separate parcels of land, is an “eyesore” that hasn’t been cared for since the hurricane.
The property has been disputed for years, and the proposal for a new hotel has been met with a bevy of concerns, ranging from negative impacts to local traffic and infrastructure to what Hooser described as the property’s “mysterious” ownership of the land to permits that opponents say have lapsed and are
outdated.
“This property has not been maintained. It’s been 30 years of no progress at all, and I think it’s time for the state, for this body, to say we’re not going to be part of it,” Hooser told the board Friday.
The property is also
described as a culturally and environmentally significant area. Native Hawaiian burial grounds are in the area, and Wailua used to serve as residence for Hawaiian royalty, or alii.
The last queen of Kauai, Deborah Kapule, used to live in Wailua.
There are also two inland fishponds and wetland areas in the area, and taro patches had been maintained in the wetland area.
The Land Board said its decision to revisit the revocable permits would allow it to consider an upcoming meeting by the Kauai Planning Commission, which in January will decide whether to renew building permits for the property owners — a more consequential action at the moment.
“If they’re not allowed to proceed with building the property, I also could only imagine that the owners … would probably request to cancel these (revocable permits) along with any other dispositions held by them,” said Alison Neustein, a district land agent for the DLNR. “Right now the property’s in limbo.”
Additionally, the board said, revisiting the permits would allow community members to come up with a plan to make sure the property is maintained if developers leave the property.
In the meantime, other efforts to stop the construction of the hotel are underway.
I Ola Wailuanui, a community group led by Kauai residents, is spearheading the effort to buy the properties outright. It’s asking the community to help fund an estimated $53.4 million, eight-year restoration project to build a cultural center and revive the fishponds on the property.
“Our vision includes the restoration of the fishponds for food production, and the education, cultural enrichment, connection and empowerment that comes with it,” the group said in an open letter. “It includes the repair of important ecological services to help us better cope with climate change and
an increasingly unstable coastline.”
Fern Holland, acting executive director of the group, is appealing to wealthy and influential people who have benefited from Hawaii to give back.
“We have to reach these really wealthy people that have $2-3 million to pledge. … You know how many movie stars have made money off of Kauai?” Holland said. “It’s arguably a floodplain you can’t do a lot with. For God’s sake, give it back to the Hawaiians.”
The Surfrider Foundation, Sierra Club Hawaii and HAPA have filed a petition for declaratory order, arguing to the Kauai Planning Commission that the developers’ building permits have lapsed and are based on the now-repealed Iniki Ordinances that followed Hurricane Iniki.
Testifiers have shown
up in droves to oppose the resort development at recent Planning Commission meetings, and an online
petition to stop it has been signed by 14,000 people so far.
