Oahu sugar mill housing camp slated for redevelopment

The remnants of a worker housing camp for the last sugar plantation to close on Oahu could become a new subdivision for primarily low-income households reflecting the character of the rural community in Waialua where some century-old homes still stand.

Two local development firms plan to rebuild what was once the Waialua Sugar Mill Plantation Camp, or Mill Camp, community on the North Shore where 67 dilapidated homes from another era remain, including about 20 still occupied by Waialua Sugar Co. retirees or surviving spouses 28 years after the plantation closed.

An affiliate of Mark Development Inc. and an associated nonprofit propose to develop 400 new homes on 87 acres of former Waialua Sugar land where about 350 homes for workers existed at the peak of plantation operations around 70 years ago.

As part of the plan, Hawaii Assisted Housing Inc., the nonprofit, would not increase existing rent for Waialua Sugar retirees or surviving spouses, who pay $25 to $45 a month for their Mill Camp homes, to honor an arrangement between former plantation owner Dole Food Co. and retiree households for life.

The plan also includes giving priority for renting or buying new homes to longtime Waialua and Haleiwa families, and producing homes for state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands beneficiaries. DHHL said in a statement that it is finalizing negotiations with Mark Development for a Mill Camp homesteading community that would include 69 turnkey houses and another 38 rentals with an option to purchase as part of the larger development project.

If the roughly estimated $280 million effort succeeds, it would in a way preserve some essence of a plantation camp community that has been gradually dissolving as residents die or move away and homes are demolished by Dole.

David Robichaux, a consultant who got two development firms interested in the project and helped preserve a former Del Monte pineapple plantation housing community in Kunia several years ago, said Mill Camp is worth preserving because it is largely intact and is a deep part of Waialua’s history.

“Waialua has lost a significant percent of its population since the plantation went down,” he said.

Some Mill Camp residents are uneasy about how much more they will have to pay for new homes and what a restored plantation-style community will be like.

“We live good,” said longtime Mill Camp resident Avelardo Bareng, 81.

Bareng, who worked at Waialua Sugar from 1977 until the plantation closed in 1996 and then stayed on with Dole for several more years picking pineapple, has lived in various Mill Camp homes during his career and would prefer not to have to leave the one he’s in now despite existing conditions.

All homes in Mill Camp date to between 1904 and 1946, according to city records, and many are in bad need of repair. Yet residents make do with what they have in the neighborhood where dozens of empty lots where homes once stood serve as household farm plots amid rough narrow roads designated by white street signs stained with red dirt.

Max Pedro, whose late father worked for Waialua Sugar, said his mother and other Mill Camp residents are feeling a lot of uncertainty about how they will be affected by redevelopment of the neighborhood, which is mostly behind former mill buildings occupied by industrial and retail businesses.

“We’re kind of in shock,” said Pedro, 54. “We’re not too sure what to expect.”

Jeanette Corpuz-Bushey, 76, was watering garden plants Tuesday while a dog tussled playfully with a cat behind her outside the home where her late mother lived.

“I love it here,” said Corpuz-­Bushey, who moved to Mill Camp in 2016 to care for her mom but grew up in another North Shore plantation camp as the daughter of an International Longshore and Warehouse Union division director who represented plantation workers.

Like other Mill Camp residents, Corpuz-Bushey isn’t sure of her future in the community if redevelopment happens.

Hawaii Assisted Housing has laid out its plan in a draft environmental assessment recently sent to the city Department of Planning and Permitting.

Under the plan, 118 new multifamily dwellings would be built in part of Mill Camp past the Waialua Hongwanji Mission where homes are gone.

This initial phase would include 68 apartments with one to three bedrooms in eight low-rise, plantation-­style buildings, and another 50 studio and one-bedroom apartments in single-story quadruplexes.

Development of this phase is expected to begin in 2024 or 2025 and be finished before 2027. These new homes would allow existing Mill Camp residents a place to live during a second phase replacing old homes and empty lots in the core of Mill Camp with 163 new single­-family houses with three to four bedrooms on 7,000-square-foot lots reminiscent of Mill Camp’s original appearance.

New homes in this second phase will largely be for Mill Camp households but also for other households earning no more than 60% of the median income on Oahu. This equates to $55,020 for a single person, $62,880 for a couple and $78,600 for a family of four.

Mill Camp household income is closer to 40% of the median, which equates to $36,680 for a single person, $41,920 for a couple and $52,400 for a family of four.

Rent for new homes would be affordable to households based on income levels under federal guidelines, and some of the homes might be sold through a rent-to-own or other program, according to the developers.

A third phase with 99 new homes would be similar to the second phase but would occupy 20 acres of the former Mill Camp area where housing no longer exists and be for DHHL if the agency agrees.

A fourth and final phase calls for restoring or selling 13 existing homes and five vacant house lots off Goodale Avenue on the other side of the former mill buildings.

To proceed, the development firms will need zoning exemptions from the city to redevelop the site mostly zoned for agriculture, and considerable state and federal financing that can be made available for affordable­housing projects.

The city already has chipped in $3.5 million to help advance the project after the land was bought from Dole in 2022 for $2.6 million and for other costs.

Craig Watase, a veteran local affordable housing developer who heads Mark Development, said he initially balked at taking on the project presented by Robichaux.

“I told him, ‘This looks crazy. No way,’” Watase said. “It’s a massive undertaking.”

Watase later decided to go forward with a strategy that includes using a nonprofit for part of the project, and hopefully realizing Robichaux’s goal to preserve Waialua history.

Growing sugar cane in Waialua dates back to 1865 and shifted among several small family operations until an acquisition in 1898 by Castle &Cooke Inc., which expanded Waialua Sugar and became one of Hawaii’s dominant plantation operators.

According to the developer’s environmental report, worker housing near the Waialua sugar mill had expanded to 350 homes by the 1950s but went into a decline by the 1970s with the economics of sugar production in Hawaii.

Dole, then an affiliate of Castle &Cooke, closed Waialua Sugar in 1996 and became the last sugar plantation to shut down on Oahu after once employing roughly 2,000 people producing sugar cane on 12,000 acres.

The company pursued diversified agriculture on much of its North Shore land, and many former workers continued living in Dole’s Mill Camp housing, paying $15 to $40 a month.

Today this monthly rent for retiree households is $25 to $45. The remainder of Mill Camp homes rent for around $900 a month or less, and many are occupied by extended families of former Waialua Sugar and other employees of Dole, which still grows pineapple on the North Shore along with other crops.

No sugar plantations remain in Hawaii. After Waialua Sugar shut down, four sugar plantations on Kauai and Maui went out of business, with the last being Hawaiian Commercial &Sugar Co. on Maui in 2016.

Some former worker housing camps have been preserved, including some on the Ewa plain that were part of Oahu Sugar Co., but in many cases subsidized housing for plantation workers disappeared with or after the plantations.

“Most of them are gone,” Robichaux said.