The Battle of Koa Ridge
Enviros and Neighbors take on Castle & Cooke's Massive Development Plans

Dave Thompson

October 22, 2003

    
     Building Mililani has kept Castle & Cooke busy since the 1960s. But with the final phase of its flagship housing development nearing completion, the state’s 11th-wealthiest landowner has shifted its energy to a new massive subdivision complex: Koa Ridge.
     For Castle & Cooke the 6,000-to-7,500-home Central O‘ahu development represents a building plan for the next 20 to 25 years. For environmentalists and many Central O‘ahu residents it represents something quite different — bad urban planning.
     Critics say the development will destroy some of O‘ahu’s best farmland and wipe out the last remnant of open space between Wahiawä and town. They worry it will harm the quantity and quality of groundwater, increase school crowding, and push the H-2 freeway’s rush-hour traffic to new levels of hellishness. They say that Koa Ridge shouldn’t be built at all, but if it is, careful measures should be taken to reduce its negative impacts.
     So far they haven’t had much success on either front.
     However, Koa Ridge did hit a snag in September when the Hawai‘i chapter of the Sierra Club won an appeal of a state Land Use Commission decision on the development. A Circuit Court judge ruled that the luc erred by reclassifying the Koa Ridge site from agriculture to urban before the developer had completed a formal environmental review.
     The decision sends Castle & Cooke back a step, though how big a step is up to the luc.
     “We hope that this is more than just a speed bump in the way they’re paving over O‘ahu,” said Sierra Club legal chair David Kimo Frankel. “We hope it’s an opportunity for the community to consider the implications of paving over prime ag land and how doing so would adversely affect our water supply, exacerbate traffic congestions and reduce open space.”
     During a 10-month series of luc hearings on Koa Ridge between 2001 and 2002, Castle & Cooke squared off against the Sierra Club and another dogged opponent: the Mililani neighborhood board.
     Both groups won “intervenor status” in the LUC’s quasi-judicial proceedings, meaning they could call witnesses, introduce evidence, cross-examine Castle & Cooke’s witnesses and generally make a case against the development.
     Both the Sierra Club and the neighborhood board would be happy to go head to head with Castle & Cooke again, this time with the benefit of the formal environmental review. Castle & Cooke wants to avoid that.
     “We hope we don’t have to go back to the beginning,” said Harry Saunders III, president of Castle & Cooke Homes Hawai‘i, Castle & Cooke’s local subsidiary. “We went through almost 12 months of testimony already where all the issues were discussed.”

Three Phases and a Medical Park
     Plans for Koa Ridge involve three separate subdivisions on 1,247 acres of mostly agricultural land along either side of H-2.
     The first and largest development, called Koa Ridge Makai, would occupy 572 acres between Küpapa Gulch and Ka Uka Boulevard (just across from the Waipi‘o Costco). The gulch would separate Koa Ridge Makai’s roughly 2,150 homes from Mililani.
     A major feature of Koa Ridge Makai would be a 210-acre medical park, to be built by Pacific Health Community Inc., the for-profit arm of the nonprofit Wahiawä Hospital Association.
     Built in 1958, Wahiawä General Hospital has grown cramped and decrepit. The hospital association decided it would rather build a new hospital than rehabilitate the existing one. While it’s at it the association figures it may as well go all out and build a sports-medicine complex, a diagnostic treatment center, a women’s health center, a physicians’ office building and other facilities.
     Pacific Health Community joined Castle & Cooke as a co-petitioner at the luc hearings. The health center attorney’s role focused on asking witnesses, What’s your position with respect to the Pacific Health Center project?
     Witnesses usually said they supported it, or they hadn’t really thought about it, or they had never heard of it. No one opposed it.
     “Thank you,” the attorney would say, then return to his seat, where he frequently fell asleep.
     While Pacific Health Center took a backseat at the hearings, it was at the forefront of a controversy in March.
     Rep. Marcus Oshiro (D, Wahiawä, Whitmore Village, Poamoho Camp), a member of the hospital association, wrote a bill that would have exempted the health center and the rest of the Koa Ridge Makai development from all of the city’s planning, zoning and construction regulations. Oshiro said he wanted to fast-track the health center because of “ambiguities in the law” that might send it back to the LUC for review.
     Oshiro got hammered in the press, and the bill was shelved in the Senate. Castle & Cooke professed ignorance of his maneuver.
     The second part of Koa Ridge, the Waiawa subdivision, would be built along Ka Uka Boulevard mauka of H-2. It would have some 1,100 homes on 191 acres. Waiawa’s timing would be tied to the development of an adjacent area owned by another developer, Gentry Companies, which already has the go-ahead to build.
     The Gentry development, along with a few other Central O‘ahu projects, account for 13,130 yet-to-be-built homes already approved by the state and city — a critical point for the Sierra Club and the neighborhood board.
     “Saying yes to growth on prime agricultural land when more than 13,000 units are already approved just doesn’t make sense,” argued Jeff Mikulina, the Sierra Club’s executive director.
     The third and largest subdivision, Koa Ridge Mauka, would consist of about 3,000 homes on a ridge above Mililani Memorial Park cemetery.
     Although Castle & Cooke included Mauka in its redistricting petition, it was widely considered a Hail Mary. The 486-acre Mauka parcel sits outside the Urban Growth Boundary, the line on the map broadly identifying areas that are either safe from or subject to potential development.
     While the LUC approved Koa Ridge Makai and Waiawa, it rejected Mauka. But Castle & Cooke never intended to start on Mauka until the other two phases are complete anyway, so there’s plenty of time to amend the Urban Growth Boundary.

Making the Case
     At the luc hearings, the Sierra Club argued that Koa Ridge would fly in the face of the city’s purported goal of keeping the country “country” and violate the Central O‘ahu Development Plan, which explicitly designated the Koa Ridge site for agriculture.
     Castle & Cooke countered by noting that the Development Plan was due for an update. Although the new plan hadn’t been finalized, it said, the city was headed toward re-designating the Koa Ridge site for urban development — which it has indeed done, over the objections of many Mililani residents.
     The Sierra Club argued that with diversified agriculture booming in the state, farming on O‘ahu — free from interisland shipping costs — was ripe for growth. Developing Koa Ridge, it said, would destroy exceptionally good farmland.
     “More than 815 acres are classified as ‘prime,’ some of the best land in the state,” Mikulina said.
     Castle & Cooke argued that there’s plenty of land throughout Hawai‘i for agriculture. “The limiting factor is the size of the market for crops that can be grown profitably in Hawai‘i,” said Castle & Cooke attorney Dickson Lee.
     The Sierra Club called witnesses from state and city water agencies, as well as a private hydrologist, who all agreed that Koa Ridge’s demands on the aquifer could reduce the quality and availability of water from seven down-slope city wells.
     Castle & Cooke brought in Tom Nance, a private hydrologist who dismissed the concerns. “I don’t think there would be a problem,” Nance said.
     The Sierra Club called as a witness Harrison Rue, a consultant and author specializing in “smart growth,” the movement among planners and builders that attempts to address urban problems such as sprawl.
     “I think I can safely say that this proposal is definitely not smart growth,” Rue said of Koa Ridge.
     Castle & Cooke called Mark Hastert, a consultant with Helber Hastert & Fee, the firm that helped plan Koa Ridge. Hastert was asked if Koa Ridge represents smart growth?
     “Yes,” he declared.
     While the Sierra Club was intent on stopping Koa Ridge if possible, the neighborhood board focused on getting the LUC to set conditions that would minimize its impact on Central O‘ahu’s current residents. The board’s main issues were schools and traffic.
     “It takes an hour to an hour-and-a-half to go 17 miles during peak hours,” said Dick Poirier, the board chair and a representative of the group at the hearings. “How much more can the community tolerate?”
     Castle & Cooke called to the witness box a traffic expert from Texas, who steadfastly avoided quantifying the impact Koa Ridge would have on traffic despite repeated questioning.
     This seemed to irritate the commission.
     “If you don’t have an educated guess of three minutes, four minutes, half an hour or more, then for me I cannot come to reason you’re an expert,” commissioner Isaac Fiesta said.
     Harry Saunders did damage control at the next hearing.
     Saunders, a Harley-Davidson-riding college drop-out who started at Castle & Cooke as a salesman, had some traffic figures to offer. The traffic expert, he said, had extrapolated them from an O‘ahu Metropolitan Planning Organization study. By 2025 the Koa Ridge development would cause travel time between Central O‘ahu and downtown to increase by just five to eight minutes during peak hours, Saunders said.
     That was “pretty favorable, actually,” he said.
     Pretty low-ball is how it sounded to Poirier, who confronted Saunders with sections of the obscure ompo study suggesting far greater increases in travel times — “well over 100 percent from existing conditions in the year 2025” on freeways and expressways, the study said.
     Saunders stuck with the traffic expert’s figures.

A Decision and an Appeal
     In June of 2002, as the luc prepared to wrap up the hearings, it drafted a proposal approving Castle & Cooke’s request to redistrict the first two phases of Koa Ridge from agriculture to urban.
     The draft included some routine conditions, such as requirements that the developer pay a “fair share” for road improvements and create a master plan for water use. All fell short of what the neighborhood board wanted — all except the condition on schools, that is.
     Koa Ridge is expected to have enough students to fill an entire elementary school, a middle school and part of a high school.
     Central O‘ahu residents had been complaining about overcrowded classrooms long before the Koa Ridge project was announced. Parents testified at the hearings that Castle & Cooke had a lousy track record in ensuring adequate classroom space in Mililani.
     “The schools have been too small, too late, and this has completely affected the life of all people in the community,” said Maryanne Selander, a Mililani resident and Realtor.
     The luc’s condition on schools said that Koa Ridge had to have schools built before residents moved in.
     Saunders balked, suggesting the condition jeopardized the entire project.
     “This is a precedent-setting amendment that has never been imposed on developers before,” he told reporters.
     A week later he told the press that the school issue could be negotiated, which indeed it was. The revised condition called for schools to be phased in over time.
     Before the luc voted on Koa Ridge, commissioner Casey Jarman took the floor.
     Jarman, a University of Hawai‘i law professor and the luc’s sole environmentalist, urged the other commissioners to reject Castle & Cooke’s petition.
     Protecting some of the island’s best agricultural land was the most compelling reason to do so, she said. Not only did the state constitution direct the luc to protect such land, but to do otherwise ran contrary to the State Plan’s goal of directing development to marginal agricultural land in order to save the best areas, she said.
     Koa Ridge wasn’t a bad idea, she said, it was just misplaced.
     “While the Pacific Health Center and residential homes of themselves are worthwhile projects, our job is to decide if they’re in the right place and at the right time as directed by state land use law,” Jarman said. “Unfortunately, they are not.”
     When she finished speaking, the roll was called, and by a vote of six to one, Castle & Cooke won the reclassification it sought. Koa Ridge cleared its first regulatory hurdle.
     Almost as soon as the luc approved the redistricting, the Sierra Club filed an appeal. It made a case based on state law requiring the developer to complete an environmental assessment “at the earliest practicable time.”
     Mikulina argued at the luc’s first hearing that “earliest practicable time” meant before the commission convened to consider the project.
     “Basically the co-petitioners are asking you to allow them to graduate before they’ve done their homework, before they’ve even taken their final exams,” Mikulina said.
     Castle & Cooke argued that it didn’t need to meet the requirement until it went to the city for rezoning. By a 6-1 vote (Jarman again), the commission agreed, and the hearings went on.
     Now, with the Sierra Club prevailing in its appeal, Koa Ridge must head back to the luc once again.
     Castle & Cooke has an Environmental Impact Statement ready to submit to the commission, Saunders told the Weekly. However, it contains no new information for the luc to consider, so there’s no need to go through another long set of hearings, he said. “I don’t think that would serve any purpose,” he said.
     Mikulina said a second round with Castle & Cooke would, at worst, offer the Sierra Club and the Mililani neighborhood board another chance to highlight the impacts Koa Ridge will have on agriculture, open space, water, schools and traffic.
     “If these issues don’t derail the project entirely, we hope that at least they would steer the project in another direction,” Mikulina said.
     Poirier said the neighborhood board would like the luc to require Castle & Cooke to do a serious traffic study. “Then we’ll have real numbers for the community to negotiate the cumulative impact of all the traffic generated by all of the developments out here,” he said.
     If Koa Ridge can avoid another showdown and get through the luc quickly, it could go to the county for rezoning around early 2004.
     Once it has rezoning in the bag — and no serious challenges are expected from the city — Koa Ridge will need only a few building permits before the bulldozers can begin to roll. If the project stays on schedule, Castle & Cooke will have the first Koa Ridge homes on the market in 2007.

Developers vs. the LUC
Attempts to hamstring or kill the state Land Use Commission are as old as the luc itself. They first arose shortly after the Legislature passed the State Land Use Law, which created the luc in 1961. That landmark legislation — the first statewide zoning measure in the U.S. — sought to protect agricultural land and bring order to the runaway urban development rampant during the land boom of the 1950s.
Two recent state court decisions resulting in setbacks for developers have reignited the decades-old call to either curtail or abolish the luc.
Both the Building Industry Association of Hawai‘i and the Land Use Research Foundation, a lobbying group for developers, have publicly questioned the need for the luc in the wake of the recent rulings. Neither returned calls from the Weekly.
On Sept. 9 a Big Island Circuit Court judge ordered the developer of Ho¯ku¯li‘a, a 1,550-acre luxury housing development on agricultural land above Kealakekua Bay, to stop work until the luc reclassifies the land.
Jack Kelly, one of the plaintiffs in the Ho¯ku¯li‘a case, said a ruling against the urbanization of land classified for agriculture has been long overdue: “Developers have been getting away with skirting state law for years,” he said. “Now that it’s being applied they’re getting up in arms.”
Two weeks after the Ho¯ku¯li‘a decision, an O‘ahu Circuit Court judge issued a ruling nullifying a luc decision to reclassify 762 acres from agriculture to urban for the planned Koa Ridge housing development.
David Kimo Frankel of the Sierra Club Hawai‘i Chapter, the plaintiff in the Koa Ridge case, said the luc offers the public a say in land-use decisions that it doesn’t get at the county level.
“In a proceeding before the Land Use Commission, citizens have a right to cross-examine developers, present evidence and have a decision based on clear criteria made by people who have not received campaign contributions or had closed-door meetings with the developer, which is what happens at the county level,” Frankel said.
Gov. Linda Lingle called for the abolishment of the luc during her election campaign. Recently she has backed away from that position to focus on reducing the amount of land classified as agriculture.
The luc decides which parts of the state shall be classified as urban, rural, agriculture or conservation. Counties are supposed to use their zoning authority in accordance with the state classifications.

O‘ahu Land-grab Milestones
1965-2002 He‘eia: After community leaders fight various developers and their projects (Hawaiian Electric’s power plant, Nanatomi Hawai‘i’s sports complex) to develop 220 acres, city takes control of land to maintain it as a nature preserve.
1970-1971 Kalama Valley: Bishop Estate’s eviction of farmers to make way for residential development spurs protest by groups such as Kokua Hawai‘i and gives rise to the modern Hawaiian movement.
1976-1984 Ko Olina/Ihilani: Groups such as Life of the Land fight against developing the former pineapple fields. A compromise is reached with a 1984 agreement that includes public access to the shoreline and economic development for local communities ($150,000 of settlement money helps jump start the area’s aquaculture industry).
1987-2002 Ka Iwi/Sandy Beach/Queen’s Beach: Campaigns by the Ka Iwi Action and Save Sandy Beach coalitions lead to the halting of development across from Sandy’s, and the preservation of the coast from Hanauma Bay to Makapu‘u. The city buys Kamehameha Schools’ land (Queen’s Beach, among other parcels) for about $70 million.
-Lesa Griffith