When Ashley Ferreira was in fifth grade, she testified at the state Land Use Commission on developer Castle & Cooke’s plan to build a community with 5,000 homes on farmland between Mililani and Waipio.

When Ferreira was in ninth grade, she testified again on a revised version of the project called Koa Ridge.

On Thursday the 11th-grader testified a third time, saying she hopes one day to have an opportunity to buy a home and work in a community such as Koa Ridge that’s close to her family in Central Oahu.

Castle & Cooke hopes the third time is the charm.

But opponents including the Sierra Club — which invalidated commission approvals for Koa Ridge twice previously — hope to keep the land in agriculture.

The arguments at Thursday’s hearing were nearly identical to the ones advanced two years ago when the project was approved by the commission only to be rejected in court.

Koa Ridge is designed for 5,000 homes, two elementary schools, a 150-room hotel, parks and nearly 500,000 square feet of retail, office and light industrial space. A 28-acre medical campus would include a 100-bed hospital, medical offices and a skilled-nursing facility with 100 to 150 beds.

Castle & Cooke says said its estimated $2.2 billion project on 768 acres is appropriate because it’s within the city’s urban growth boundary and is adjacent to urban communities of Waipio and Mililani as well as 3,700 acres of land approved for urban use and owned by Kamehameha Schools.

The project also would provide 1,500 affordable homes under city guidelines.

Anthony Aalto, a Sierra Club Oahu Chapter member, told commissioners that paving over farmland has to stop so Hawaii can reverse its growing dependence on imported food, which the state Department of Agriculture says is close to 90 percent. "These lands at Koa Ridge are some of our very best farmlands," he said.

Traffic problems are a big concern for many Central Oahu residents, and the reason Richard Poirier, chairman of the Mililani/Waipio/Malemanu Neighborhood Board, is participating in the hearing.

Poirier wants the commission to reject Koa Ridge unless traffic problems, including commute times to downtown Honolulu, are mitigated.

The Mililani Mauka/Laulani Valley Neighborhood Board also has expressed concerns about traffic, but voted 5-2 to support Koa Ridge two years ago.

Castle & Cooke aims to minimize traffic problems by spending $50 million on road improvements, including two freeway interchange connections.

A new lane on the H-2 freeway connecting to a 1,600-stall parking lot at a planned Pearl Highlands rail station is also part of the city’s mass-transit project.

Commuting would be further reduced by jobs created at Koa Ridge. The developer said 2,500 permanent jobs will be created by the project, though a consultant estimated that between 750 and 1,500 would be new jobs in the community and not relocated from somewhere else.

About the loss of prime farmland, Castle & Cooke consultant and agricultural economics analyst Bruce Plasch, told commissioners that there is enough fallow good farmland on Oahu to supply the state with all the fruits and vegetables it consumes.

However, most of that available land would need significant investment to restore water delivery, Plasch acknowledged under cross-examination by Eric Seitz, an attorney representing the Sierra Club and another project opponent, state Sen. Clayton Hee.

About 325 acres of the Koa Ridge site is leased by Aloun Farms to raise vegetables and seed corn. Castle & Cooke has leased 335 acres of fallow land in Wahiawa suitable to continue operations, and has helped the farm finance improvements to the land and water system by forgoing rent at the Koa Ridge site in 2009.

The developer also is providing cattle ranch Flying R Livestock Co., which leases almost 200 acres, with replacement land.

The proposed hospital at Koa Ridge would help meet the need for more medical facilities in the area.

"We need to have more medical services in Central Oahu, especially with the demise of HMC-West," said Roy Doi, chairman of the Wahiawa Hospital Association, refering to the recently closed Hawaii Medical Center in Ewa. Wahiawa Hospital plans to develop the medical center within Koa Ridge.

The hearing is scheduled to continue today.

If Castle & Cooke gains commission approval, it could deliver the first homes in late 2014 if the city approves a zoning change.

However, project opponents could contest a commission decision in court. That has happened before.

In 2010 Castle & Cooke obtained commission approval, but the Sierra Club suit overturned that in court on grounds that one commissioner was ineligible to vote.

A previous version of the plan was approved in 2002, but the timing of an environmental assessment was successfully challenged by the Sierra Club.