From the Maui News

“This report is being heavily scrutinized by both us and the public,” said Planning Committee Chairman Don Couch. “Normally, council will get the report and file communications immediately. It is unusual to have them come up and discuss it here, but I felt it was important to keep an eye on this project and see what is going on.”

The three-phased project district development, formerly known as Wailea 670, is expected to include up to 1,150 housing units mauka of the Wailea Resort, an 18-hole golf course and clubhouse, retail and commercial components, a 12-mile network of trails and bike paths and a 40-acre preserve for native plants. ”

Conditions called for a preserve up to 130 acres depending on what the various agencies recommended. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommended that “the entire 130-acre at the southern end of the project merits preservation.” 

This was Maui Tomorrow’s testimony:

May 21, 2013

Maui County Council Planning Committee

Re: CC 13-156PC Honua’ula Parters LLC Annual Compliance Report

Aloha Chair Couch & Committee Members.

Maui Tomorrow would like to offer comments on Condition 5 of Honua’ula Partners’ Annual Compliance Report concerning the project’s offsite workforce housing. 

• Honua’ula Partners actively supported this condition during the Council’s final rezoning and Project District Phase 1 review process (2007-08). They assured the Council that 250 units of multifamily housing meeting the 70% to 100% HUD guidelines could be built within 2 years, and that all zoning in the offsite Ka’ono’ulu location was in place. No mention was made that a third party would need to be found to build the housing.

• Council member Johnson, during the 2007-08 Council hearings, rightly questioned whether the Ka’ono’ulu Light Industrial designated site was actually reviewed and approved for residential development. In fact, Honua’ula’s projected workforce housing at Ka’ono’ulu was never proposed to the state Land Use Commission, not during the 1995 Ag to Urban zoning decision and never in the years since despite the LUC’s Condition 15 which required the land to be built “substantially as represented;” or in any of the annual reports required since that time.

• By avoiding discussion of residential units at Ka’ono’ula the environmental impacts associated with residential use, such as access roads, water and sewage, have never been discussed and no conditions to mitigate such impacts have been developed.

• Never mentioned to County Council was required site modifications including the relocation of the County’s main 36” Central Maui Joint Venture water transmission line which bisects the site or that Ka’ono’ulu gulch may need to be filled in with its drainage rerouted to Kulani’hakoi gulch bringing it through one of South Maui’s most flood-prone areas.

• The Council was led to believe that the Ka’ono’ulu site would require less infrastructure investment, was ready to go, and that workforce housing there would be an ideal fit. These claims no longer appear accurate.

• Honua’ula Partners commissioned a market study to justify the financial viability of the project for its 2010 EIS. That study noted that ”regardless of the current recession, there continues to be an unmet need for affordably priced housing in the Kihei-Makena study area.” If this report is accurate, the developers should be able to commit to fulfilling this condition despite the their annual compliance reports which claim that market conditions make it difficult to find anyone to bid on building the 125 affordable owner occupied units on the Ka’ono’ulu site.

Please require that Condition 5 be fully implemented after the Ka’ono’ulu residential project is properly reviewed and receives necessary Community Plan and State LUC amendments. Legal challenges involving Ka’ono’ulu were only initiated in 2012, four years after County rezoning approval. Since the original promise of a quick turn around for affordable housing has proven unrealistic, there’s no reason now not to take the time to do it right.

Mahalo for your consideration,

Irene Bowie

Executive Director

 See articles on this “Kihei Megamall project“. Maui Tomorrow and other South Maui groups filed suit when the project did not match what was approved at the Land Use Commission and the Land Use Commission ruled that the developer was not in compliance with the plan submitted.

Not mentioned in the article is the Sierra Club has filed legal action asserting that the Honua’ula EIS is inadequate. According to one Sierra Club member who wished to remain anonymous, “The EIS is huge, wordy and repetitive – but lacks actual content and misses numerous archeological sites as well as erroneously assuming that one can relocate endangered species to an offsite preserve. That simply isn’t possible.”