More ʻAina Leʻa Delays: A year ago, the 38-acre parcel on which ʻAina Leʻa had begun to build the first of nearly 400 units of “affordable housing” was sold at a foreclosure auction to Romspen Investment Corporation, one of the company’s several creditors. By order of the 3rd Circuit Court, the writ of possession was to be issued within a matter of weeks.
That has yet to happen. In June, the court approved yet another delay – the fifth – in transferring ownership of the parcel. What lies behind the multiple extensions is the murky condition of the title. The commissioner in foreclosure, George Robinson, had informed the court last year of the difficulty he had in even getting a title company to prepare a title report.
Old Republic eventually agreed to prepare the report. In March, it presented the court and commissioner with an updated title report, but that report noted “several encumbrances that will need to be clarified and/or resolved before this matter can close.”
In a stipulation providing for the latest time extension, issued by the court on June 26, the court noted that now “there are unresolved questions as to whether Old Republic will issue title insurance for any sale of the property” by Romspen or its agents.
And there do seem to be plenty of transactions that might cast a shadow over title to the property. More than a decade ago, ʻAina Leʻa raised capital for the purchase of this and an adjoining parcel through the sale of “undivided land fractions” to hundreds of investors in Asia, giving each of them a tiny fee-simple share of the land. When the company entered bankruptcy, the investors were instructed to turn their fee interest over to a trust, which would manage their investments. Moreover, the property to be conveyed to Romspen had been subject to junior liens as well.
In 2021, the subject lot and two additional ones were also encumbered by an affordable housing agreement that ʻAina Leʻa entered into with the Hawaiʻi County Office of Housing and Community Development. That agreement calls for 385 affordable units to be built on the land to be conveyed to Romspen, plus 120 to be built on other parcels. Soon after signing the affordable housing agreement, Robert Wessels, CEO of ʻAina Leʻa, signed a purchase and sale agreement, committing to sell the lot to Lava Rock, LLC, a Florida company.
Michael Kliks: Hawaiʻi has lost yet another strong voice for conservation and science with the death in May of Michael Kliks. He was well known in Hawaiʻi as a champion of honeybees. Less well known was his background as a war photographer and parasitologist. In that latter capacity, he was one of the earliest researchers to investigate the deadly impacts of rat lungworm disease.
KIUC Permits: On June 7, the state Board of Land and Natural Resources appealed a recent ruling by 1st Circuit Judge John Tonaki in favor of Kiaʻi Wai O Waiʻaleʻale and Friends of Mahaʻulepu. The community groups had challenged the board’s 2021 and 2022 renewals of Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative’s revocable permits to divert Waiʻaleʻale and Waikoko streams, as well as the board’s decisions to deny their requests for a contested case hearing.
Tonaki found that the Land Board had denied the groups’ due process rights, and that “the board’s failure to enter findings of fact or conclusions of law resulted in an inability to determine whether the board properly exercised the discretion vested in it by the constitution and the statutes in approving the permits.”
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