A permit that allows extensive renovations to proceed at the 45-year-old Turtle Bay Resort won final approval from the Honolulu City Council on Wednesday.

The total project is expected to cost about $116 million, but the share requiring approval of a special management area use permit from the Council via Resolution 20-97 accounts for about $26 million of the improvements.

Planned are redesigning and relocating the porte cochere of the resort’s main building; extending a reflecting pool and adding a garden; constructing a new pool; installing trellises at walkways to the resort’s beach cottages and adding a new pool behind the cottages; expanding its golf cart barn; modifying the rock wall entrance into the resort; demolishing a guard shack; and replacing the chain-link fence along Kamehameha Highway from Kawela Bay to Kahuku Point with a wood fence and/or landscaped hedges.

No additional rooms are part of the renovation, which is expected to take 12 to 24 months. The resort currently has 410 hotel rooms and suites in its main hotel and 42 beach cottages. Closed for business as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, the resort in normal times employs 662.

Jerry Gibson, Turtle Bay vice president, said the project has the additional benefit of providing up to 225 construction jobs during the economic downturn.

Representatives from the Hawaii Construction Alliance and the Hawaii Laborers Union Local 368 spoke in support of the project.

“The planned improvements at Turtle Bay Resort complement the significant strides made (by the resort) in land conservation, public access and community outreach,” Gibson said.

A 2015 conservation agreement with the state, the Army and the Trust for Public Lands allowed for up to two full-service hotels with a total of 625 rooms and up to 100 resort residential units in exchange, in part, for keeping 665 acres from Kawela Bay to Kahuku Point designated as conservation.

At a Council Planning, Zoning and Housing Committee meeting last month, Gibson said there are no immediate plans to proceed with that expansion.

In 1986, Turtle Bay’s former owners won approval to build 3,500 additional units, including five new hotel sites. But those plans were halted due to community opposition.

In other Council news, a bill expanding the city’s controversial sit-lie law to new areas in Kalihi was given the second of three required readings. The vote was 8-1, with Councilman Brandon Elefante the lone no vote and Councilwoman Kym Pine voting yes with reservations.

The sit-lie ordinance prohibits individuals from lying down or sitting on sidewalks fronting specifically designated commercial areas from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. It has drawn the ire of homeless advocates.

Bill 13 would add portions of Dillingham Boulevard and Nimitz Highway to the prohibition.