Mayor Kirk Caldwell is expected to sign a rezoning bill Wednesday for the contentious 11,750-home Ho‘opili project in West Oahu, but opponents say their fight is far from over.
The Hawaii Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments next month on an appeal of the state Land Use Commission’s approval of the project, which reclassified the 1,554-acre site to urban from agricultural use.
Caldwell, in an opinion piece appearing in the editorial section of Wednesday’s Honolulu Star-Advertiser, said he will sign Bill 3 as approved unanimously by the Honolulu City Council because Ho‘opili’s new homes will help ease Oahu’s serious housing shortage.
"We all agree that we are in a real housing crisis," Caldwell wrote, noting that a recent study said there is a need for more than 24,000 new units and that most of those units will need to be priced within range of those in low and moderate income levels. At least 30 percent of Ho‘opili’s units, or 3,525 homes, must be affordable to families making no more than 120 percent of median income. Federal housing guidelines for 2015 list the median income for a family of four on Oahu at $114,980.
The loss of prime agricultural lands and the addition of cars to an already congested West Oahu-Honolulu traffic corridor are the main concerns raised by opponents.
Caldwell said the lands under Ho‘opili, now largely in farm use, have been planned for housing development since the 1970s and that the mixed-use and high-density nature of the project will help reduce the number of additional vehicles on the road.
Anthony Aalto, Oahu chairman for the Sierra Club Hawaii chapter, said Caldwell promised project opponents that he would address concerns they raised but that the mayor has shown little effort to do so.
"He did say he would densify the project," Aalto said, noting that both Caldwell and the Sierra Club support the concept of a rail line and placing transit-oriented development around it. "About 2,300 of the housing units at Ho‘opili are not transit-oriented development; they are traditional, single-family homes sprawling in traditional suburban-sprawl style." Most will be more than half a mile from a train station, which means they will likely commute with cars, he said.
The Sierra Club has said repeatedly that it would prefer the multifamily-style homes of Ho‘opili be placed in downtown Kapolei, where such units are already zoned. It also wants the rail line to extend there to be able to reach those new homes.
Attorney Eric Seitz, who is representing the Sierra Club and former state Sen. Clayton Hee in its appeal of the LUC decision, confirmed that the Hawaii Supreme Court will hear oral arguments June 25. Ho‘opili opponents argue that the LUC violated the Hawaii Constitution when it reclassified the Ho‘opili acres to urban use because commission members are supposed to protect lands identified as "important agricultural lands" from development.
"While the land in question has never officially been designated as IAL, it meets the statutory criteria and is critical to promote food self-sufficiency in the state," Seitz stated in a written brief.
Meanwhile, the city has only now begun its job of designating productive agricultural lands, and the state should have not approved the Ho‘opili application until that process is completed, the brief said.
But Horton-Schuler attorneys Gregory Kugle and Matthew Evans, in a responding brief, said that neither the LUC nor the courts can place a moratorium on boundary amendments arbitrarily.
"The LUC cannot undertake a task that the constitution delegates to the Legislature and the counties," the brief said. Doing so would be a "violation of separation of powers." Besides coming to the conclusion that the homes are needed to meet the housing demand, the commission determined "the boundary amendment would not impair the potential growth of agriculture on Oahu and or elsewhere, based upon the abundance of available, high-quality agricultural land."
The Sierra Club, Hee and Seitz are making similar arguments in a case brought against the LUC and Castle & Cooke Homes and the 3,500-home Koa Ridge development. Opening arguments in that case are being heard by the Supreme Court on Thursday. A decision there could signal the fate of the appeal against Ho‘opili.
Seitz said he has urged the city, assuming the Ho‘opili rezoning becomes law, to not issue any permits to Horton-Schuler until the Supreme Court concludes its case.
City Deputy Planning Director Art Challacombe, in a statement, said that in the absence of any court order to do otherwise, the city intends to issue permits in accordance with any new zoning ordinances.
