Turtle Bay Resort plans to expand farming on land mauka of its hotel on Oahu’s North Shore, following completion of a $6 million deal Monday to preserve the agricultural property.
The resort received $6 million from the Army, the state and the city in return for recording an easement that restricts 468 acres from uses other than farming and conservation, including a specific prohibition against housing unless it’s for farmworkers.
”This agreement guarantees this massive parcel of prime property will always be utilized to grow crops and help feed the people of Koolauloa and the North Shore,” Drew Stotesbury, CEO of Turtle Bay Resort, said in a statement. “There will never be gentleman estates or residential developments built on these farmlands.”
Turtle Bay had been working on the easement sale for about five years and had previously expected the sale to close early last year.
A nonprofit organization, the Trust for Public Land, arranged the purchase through government land conservation programs. The Army chipped in the most money, $3 million. The city and state each contributed $1.5 million.
Gov. David Ige, Mayor Kirk Caldwell and City Council Chairman Ernie Martin all issued statements lauding the land preservation partnership.
“We need to support agriculture and help our local farmers dramatically increase the amount of food we grow locally,” Ige said.
“This is a great step in conserving agricultural land to increase our food security and keep the promise of ‘Keeping the Country Country,’” added Caldwell.
And Martin said, “The City and County of Honolulu must prioritize local agriculture as a necessity to keep Honolulu thriving and Oahu a wholesome and healthy island community.”
Currently, only 12 farmers lease plots and grow fruits and vegetables that include bananas, papayas, basil, tomatoes, eggplant and taro at what the resort calls Kuilima Farms, where much of the land is fallow.
The property is a large remnant of what had once been part of Kahuku Plantation Co., which grew sugar cane on the land until that operation was shut down in 1971.
A developer converted much of the plantation makai of Kamehameha Highway for resort use as a way to offset the economic loss and unemployment from the plantation’s shutdown, and Turtle Bay Resort was born in 1972. Land on the mauka side of the highway, however, remained in agriculture under landowner Campbell Estate, which leased the property to independent farmers.
In 2005 the then-owner of the resort, Oaktree Capital Management, bought the farmland from an affiliate of the estate now known as James Campbell Co. for $13.5 million.
Oaktree acquired the farmland mainly to control drainage of mountain water flowing to the resort, though the company also wanted the land for possible development as an agricultural subdivision for residential use, according to Ralph Makaiau, a 44-year Turtle Bay employee and senior project manager for the resort’s current management company, Replay Resorts.
That type of development is often criticized as “gentlemen’s estates,” where expensive homes are built on farmland and crop production is an afterthought.
Replay Resorts was installed to manage the resort and the farmland after a consortium of lenders foreclosed on Oaktree and assumed ownership of the resort and farm properties in 2010.
Makaiau, in an interview last year, said an idea to enhance farming on the site and link it with the resort arose in 2012, and Colorado-based farm consulting firm Agrinetx was retained to assess feasibility.
Agrinetx produced a master-plan framework that identifies areas for new crops including coffee, flowers, orchards and a goat dairy that could be branded after the resort.
Implementing the plan could disrupt existing Kuilima Farms tenants — most of whom are from Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines — if they can’t improve their operations and secure long-term leases that Turtle Bay is offering.
Turtle Bay has committed to help tenants with some of the impending changes, including providing assistance with producing business plans and complying with government regulations.
Scott McCormack, a Turtle Bay vice president, said in a statement that a priority for the resort is to continue supporting its 12 farm tenants to help them advance under the master plan, which calls for modernizing farming techniques, operations and marketing.
“We are committed to being a leader in developing economically viable and environmentally sustainable farming operations for locally produced food and farm-to-table operations and sharing them with residents and visitors,” he said. “Our vision is to create a truly unique, one-of-a-kind experience that reflects the spirit, character and natural beauty of the North Shore.”
The farmland easement is the second protective land easement sold by the resort’s current owners. In October the landowner preserved 629 acres of resort-zoned property at Turtle Bay for public use in perpetuity.
In that deal the resort received $45 million — $35 million from the state, $7.5 million from the city and $2.5 million from the Army in partnership with the Trust for Public Land — in return for giving the state 53 acres fronting Kawela Bay, giving the city 8 acres for beachfront park use and prohibiting development on 568 acres that includes land occupied by and surrounding the resort’s two golf courses.
The resort had previously planned to develop 650 homes on portions of the 629 acres. The easement limits future development to both sides of Turtle Bay’s existing 443-room oceanfront hotel, where up to 100 homes and two hotels with a combined 625 rooms are planned.
