Lahaina needs housing. Even before the firestorm that tore through Lahaina in August, housing for the people who worked in the hotels, shops, and other businesses in West Maui was scarce and expensive.
More than 3,700 homes in the area were damaged by the fire, including nearly 1,700 that were totally lost, according to insurance claims made by mid-November.
Yet land that was approved for more than a thousand homes and apartments three decades ago has yet to see the first building go vertical.
The land in question sits above the condos and golf courses of the Kaʻanapali resort. In 1993, then-landowner Amfac petitioned the Land Use Commission to remove two tracts of land — one 60 acres, the other around 240 acres — from the state Agricultural District and place them in the Urban District. Under an agreement Amfac had with the Housing Finance and Development Corporation, pursuant to Act 15 of the 1988 Legislature, 60 percent of the 1,700 housing units to be built on those two tracts would be affordable to households at various levels of the area median income, ranging from 50 percent AMI up to 140 percent AMI.
By 2008, the successor landowner — Kaʻanapali Land Management Corporation (KLMC) — had decided it was no longer feasible to pursue the 1993 plan, as development costs “were expected to far exceed anticipated revenues from the sale of developed units,” the LUC was told.
In 2009, then, the LUC amended its redistricting order, essentially bifurcating the project. The more mauka portion of 240 acres, to be called the Puʻukoliʻi Village Mauka (but more recently, just Puʻukoliʻi Village), would be developed with fewer housing units and a reduced percentage of affordable options. Instead of the 1,300 units originally planned, there would now be 940. Instead of a requirement that 60 percent be affordable, a new agreement involving KLMC, Maui County, and the Hawaiʻi Housing Finance and Development Corporation called for 51 percent to be affordable.
The agreement did not, however, address the affordability quotient for the smaller “Puʻukoliʻi Triangle” area. As KLMC has told the LUC in its intermittent “annual” reports, the triangle area is now being incorporated into the much larger Kaʻanapali 2020 Master Plan, covering around 1,160 acres. That plan, work on which began in 1999, is apparently still a work in progress, even though an environmental impact statement preparation notice (EISPN) was published in 2002, and another EISPN published in 2005. As explained in the latter document, the earlier EISPN named the Maui County Department of Planning as the accepting authority. But, while preparing the draft EIS, multiple factors triggering environmental review were identified, the 2005 EISPN states. As a result, KLMC was withdrawing the earlier EISPN and was substituting the newer one, which identified the Land Use Commission as the accepting authority.
The 2005 prep notice described a plan that would add 2,810 housing units spread over some 600 acres and increase areas of golf courses and open space by 319 acres.
To carry out the master plan, the EISPN states, a number of entitlements are required:
- A state land use boundary amendment to place lands in the Agricultural District into the Urban District;
- An amendment to the 1993 LUC decision;
- An amendment to the West Maui Community Plan;
- A change in zoning for nearly the entire master plan area. The EISPN notes that even though the LUC placed nearly 300 acres into the Urban District, because that was done under the auspices of a state law (Act 15, of the 1988 Legislature, addressing affordable housing), the county’s zoning maps “still reflect an underlying ‘Agricultural’ zoning designation, since these areas were not zoned via county ordinance.”
The West Maui Community Plan was recently updated, taking effect in January 2022. It designates the area of the Puʻukoliʻi Village Mauka as “small town center” while the rest of the master plan area is described as “planned growth area.”
What’s Been Done
Even though no housing has been built in the three decades since initial approval by the LUC, several other improvements, including some required by the LUC, have been carried out.
A roadway linking the Honoapiʻilani Highway to the Puʻukoliʻi Village area has been designed and paved. The roadway, Kakaʻalaneo Drive, is eventually to be public and serve as a major connector between the long-proposed and long-stalled Lahaina Bypass Road, fronting the Puʻukoliʻi Village, and Honoapiʻilani Highway. For now, it forms the sole access to the exclusive Kaʻanapali Coffee Farms agricultural subdivision.
A start of sorts has been made on the medical facilities proposed in the LUC docket, although it is being developed offsite. In 2014, a parcel just under 15 acres along Kakaʻalaneo Drive was sold to the Newport Hospital Corporation. In 2009, it had received a certificate of need from the state Health Department; in 2016, it broke ground for a 25-bed acute-care hospital. By 2017, it had graded the site. No further work appears to have been done. A condominium property regime divided the lot into five units, all of which are intended to be occupied by the various components of the medical center, including, in addition to the hospital, a 40-bed skilled nursing facility, a 40-bed assisted living facility, a medical office building or clinic, and possibly a residential treatment facility.
What’s Next?
For years, annual reports to the Land Use Commission have stated that work toward completing development of the 298 acres in the 1993 docket, as amended, is contingent on completion of the master plan and county rezoning, among other things. So far, however, there is no evidence that Kaʻanapali Land Management Corporation has pushed to finalize the plan or obtain county rezoning.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, KLMC’s parent, Kaʻanapali Land, LLC, stated that in January 2021, it had entered into agreements with an unrelated third party — not identified in the filing — “to prepare plans to develop the Puʻukoliʻi Village Mauka and another subdivision on the company’s property. The plans are to include development segments and timeline, offsite and onsite infrastructure, construction cost analysis, proposed budgets and proforma financial statements. If after discussion and negotiation the company and the third party are unable to agree on the plans, then either the company or the third party may terminate the agreements.”
Questions posed to Chad Fukunaga, KLMC vice president, about plans for the redistricted area were not answered by press time. Nor did Maui County Planning Department representatives respond when asked whether the company had proposed rezoning properties within the master plan area.
Tamara Paltin, the County Council member representing West Maui, said the main problem is water availability. “I am not aware of any current application for a change in zoning,” she said in an email reply to a request for comment.
— Patricia Tummons
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