On April 19, in accordance with a decision made earlier this year by the Board of Land and Natural Resources, the state House of Representatives adopted a concurrent resolution authorizing the public auction of a 55-year lease for submerged lands where the Kane\u02bbohe Yacht Club has its piers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In January, to end the decades of annually renewing the club\u2019s month-to-month revocable permit for the lands, the Land Board approved a request by the Department of Land and Natural Resources\u2019 Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation to offer the lands at a public auction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DOBOR had tailored its request to require that the lands be used for recreational boat pier purposes, and to require bidders to \u201chave permission to access the subject submerged lands from adjacent fast lands.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In effect, the yacht club would likely be the only qualified bidder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the Land Board\u2019s January 8 meeting, board member Vernon Char expressed his confusion over the requirements that seemed to preclude any other bidders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DOBOR\u2019s Richard Howard admitted that the eligible pool would be restricted by the access requirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because the yacht club owns the piers that sit on the lands to be auctioned, it would have the right to remove them if it did not win the lease. Otherwise, the ownership of the piers would revert to the state, Howard added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Kaua\u02bbi board member Tommy Oi, \u201cit\u2019s not a fair auction,\u201d given the access requirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know. It\u2019s not the largest pool. Correct. Nobody else has expressed interest in using that land. The neighbors to either side have not inquired about renting the submerged land,\u201d Howard replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe question is not so much gonna be who gets it, because the likely bidder will be the yacht club, but the price for it,\u201d board chair and DLNR director Suzanne Case explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Board member Chris Yuen agreed, noting that with or without the access requirement, \u201cthe only practical bidder is the Kane\u02bbohe Yacht Club.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor better or worse, we\u2019re kind of stuck together,\u201d he continued. \u201cThey need the lease \u2026 and from our point of view, you need a substantial piece of property next to the piers to use them. At the very least, you need a parking lot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said he was glad to see that the upset price DOBOR set would bring in substantially more rent than what the yacht club has been paying. Under the proposed minimum lease rent, rather than earning revenues based on a rate of $4.75 per foot per month on each of the vessels moored at the yacht club\u2019s piers, DOBOR\u2019s revenues would likely be based on a rate of $8\/foot\/month, Yuen estimated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a bargain,\u201d he said. He added that even though he was unhappy with the way the appraisal that determined the upset price was done, \u201cI think we\u2019re in the ballpark.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He pointed out that if the state set the minimum rent too high, and the yacht club then chose not to bid, \u201cwe end up in a game of chicken. If they pull the piers out, we both lose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the end, the board approved DOBOR\u2019s request as submitted, although Char abstained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(For more background on this, see, \u201cBoard Talk: Boating Fees, Bottomfish Reserves, and Yacht Club Encroachments,\u201d from our February 2019 issue, and our July 2, 2020 EH-XTRA item, \u201cKaneohe Yacht Club Keeps Permit, For Now.\u201d All are available free on our website, environment-hawaii.org<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 Teresa Dawson<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On April 19, in accordance with a decision made earlier this year by the Board of Land and Natural Resources, the state House of Representatives adopted a concurrent resolution authorizing the public auction of a 55-year lease for submerged lands … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-13839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-september-2021","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}