The 11,750-home Hoopili development on agricultural lands on the Ewa Plain got the thumbs-up Wednesday from the Honolulu Planning Commission.
The commission voted 6-0 to send a favorable recommendation to the City Council on rezoning from agricultural to residential, business and mixed use for D.R. Horton–Schuler Division’s plan for the 1,554-acre site. The Council will likely begin looking at the rezoning request in January.
The project — which sits between Kapolei, Ewa and Waipahu — has been contentious since it was first proposed years ago.
Supporters say it will bring badly needed homes and jobs to the area. Opponents say it will worsen traffic and eliminate prime agricultural lands.
At Wednesday’s hearing at the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands conference room in Kapolei, a majority of those present wore T-shirts signaling their support for Hoopili. But more than half of those who gave written testimony said they oppose it.
The development is the largest land rezoning request to come before the city in recent history. It is more than three times what the Council approved last year for the 3,500-unit first phase of Castle & Cooke’s Koa Ridge project between Waipio and Mililani.
Hoopili officials emphasize that the project is designed to be sustainable, allowing many of its residents to live, work and play within the community.
Horton is proposing that 9,463 of Hoopili’s units, more than 80 percent, be multifamily apartment, townhouse or condominium units while only 2,287 units are eyed as traditional, single-family residential homes.
At the center of the project is the Hoopili rail transit station, designed to be a transit-oriented development hub.
Project opponent Kioni Dudley, head of Friends of Makakilo, urged the commission to reject the application, arguing that it was invalid.
He said a stipulation in the state Land Use Commission’s reclassification approval for Hoopili clearly required that three state and city agencies needed to "accept" an updated traffic study from Horton before it could apply for rezoning with the city. The city Department of Transportation Services did not do so before the application to the city was submitted, he said.
But DTS Director Mike Formby told commission members that his staff received, accepted, reviewed and commented on the report, but that it is the city’s policy for the Department of Planning and Permitting to issue written notice that a traffic report had been accepted.
After Formby’s explanation, commission members pressed city officials no further on the matter.
A majority of those who spoke in favor of the project were from the construction and trades industries.
Makakilo resident Gino Soquena, government and community relations director for the Laborers International Union of North America, Local 368, said Hoopili will bring affordable housing, commercial and other activities to West Oahu.
Additionally, "Hoopili will also create thousands of jobs in construction and also permanent job opportunities, allow residents to live and work in the same community," Soquena said.
Makakilo resident Sidney Higa, a resident of the area for 33 years, said he wants his daughter and her young family to be able to return to Hawaii from the mainland.
"Without Hoopili, without jobs, they’re not able to come back here," Higa said.
But Dean Capelouto, transportation chairman of the Makakilo/Kapolei/Honokai Hale Neighborhood Board, said the board voted in summer 2013 to reverse an earlier position in support of Hoopili taken by the previous board, which had a different composition.
Capelouto said the project flies against state policy to protect prime agricultural lands and the project will only worsen the daily traffic woes faced by West Oahu residents.
"It isn’t that our board is totally anti-development," he said. "It’s just that we don’t see the infrastructure coming in first. The lack of infrastructure … it’s crushing people."
Ewa resident Michelle Tomas said she felt the need to testify against the project on behalf of her grandchildren.
"You are paving over prime agricultural land," Tomas said, noting that some of the commission members are relatively young.
"We need to protect the future for the generations. Someone has to take a stand and be brave and be bold because your decision is going to carry you into the future."
Horton has agreed to foot the estimated tab of $9 million to $10 million to add one lane in each direction of the H-1 freeway between the Kunia and Waiawa interchanges. It has also agreed to add $136 million in other traffic improvements.
