HILO, Hawai‘i — After public outcry, a controversial West Hawaii housing development on Tuesday was denied a time extension to complete its project.
When development of the Kona Vistas subdivision began in 1984 on Queen Ka‘ahumanu Highway in Holualoa, the developers at the time planned for a second phase that would add a 450-unit multifamily housing project on a 69-acre parcel immediately south of the subdivision.
Although that phase never materialized, new developers KV3 LLC and Kona Three LLC purchased the land in 2015 with the intention of completing it.
Since then, however, the project has stalled, leading the developers in 2022 to request a 10-year extension from Hawai‘i County.
The Leeward Planning Commission was to consider the application in March, but that meeting was cancelled due to a lack of quorum. Having failed to make a decision on the matter within an sufficient amount of time, the commission forwarded the application to the County Council with an unfavorable recommendation by default.
After more than an hour of searing opposition from area residents, the County Council voted Tuesday to uphold that decision.
West Hawai‘i residents held court for more than an hour at Tuesday’s meeting of the council’s Committee on Legislative Approvals and Acquisitions, urging the panel to vote down the time extension.
Opposition to the project came from many angles, from its impact on Native Hawaiian culture, to the high risk of flooding on the property, to the already excessive strain on local wastewater and traffic infrastructure, to deep-seated mistrust of the developers.
“They’re not builders; they’re developers,” said John Powell. “They just want the time extension so they can sell (the land) to somebody else. They sell dirt.”
Kona Vistas resident Robert Harris said the project’s traffic plan is woefully inadequate for the amount of additional vehicles the development would put onto local roads. Because of the lack of ingress and egress routes into the subdivision, he estimated that up to 1,000 vehicles would be deposited onto Kona Vistas roads daily.
Resident Rebecca Melendez presented a petition, signed by 372 people, urging the council to vote down the extension. She specifically cited the area’s deteriorating waste management and electrical infrastructure, which she said are already overly taxed by the current population.
“What might have been doable 40 years ago … is certainly not doable now,” said resident Laura Johnson. “Going forward would mean an additional 900 vehicles twice a day … dumping onto (Queen Ka‘ahumanu Highway) or residential streets in the community. The developers’ traffic study was done during COVID; traffic was very light back then, and we need to look at what traffic is like right now.”
Planning consultant Daryn Arai later disputed this claim, saying the traffic counts were conducted in 2019, before the pandemic.
“We need to get tough with these developers who lie to the council and commissions, and always come whining in about how they can’t do ‘X’ as part of their application because they won’t make enough money,” said former Kona Councilwoman Brenda Ford. “They always come back, and they always ask to reduce the infrastructure and … build it at the taxpayer expense.”
Kona Councilwoman Rebecca Villegas invited Hawaiian cultural expert Tom Pohaku Stone to speak about the remnants of a holua slide — a course used by Hawaiians to bring large logs downslope from the mountain — on the project site. That slide, along with other cultural sites, led the Hawai‘i County Cultural Resources Commission to recommend last year that the property be preserved in perpetuity.
“Our kupuna at that time were building voyaging canoes still yet,” Stone said. “And we’re talking about (felling) trees over 100 feet tall with stone tools. And that takes years and hundreds of hundreds of man-hours.”
Stone said the process of bringing trees down via a holua slide was deeply entwined with Hawaiian culture and worship, and that knowledge and evidence of such slides have been obscured by settlers developing the land.
Several council members excoriated the project. Villegas in particular said it had begun during a time when “Kona was being sold down the river” to developers without heed for cultural preservation.
She added that the developers could still profit off the land by selling it to the county for preservation through the county’s Public Access, Open Space and Natural Resource Preservation Commission, which has nominated the site as a candidate for purchase.
“This community has asked for an open space corridor, and this is a perfect location for that,” Villegas said. “There is greater value for our broader community in perpetuating and protecting these spaces so that my mo‘opuna (grandchildren) and your mo‘opuna’s mo‘opuna could walk this land and it not be townhomes that I don’t believe my children could ever afford.”
“As much as I know that you guys have invested in this, you gotta try again,” said Hamakua Councilwoman Heather Kimball. “Take what you heard today from everybody, and come back and try again.”
Hilo Councilwoman Jenn Kagiwada said she was sickened that the county had approved the 215-single-family lot Kona Vistas subdivision before the denser, more affordable multifamily subdivision. Despite this, she added that she couldn’t in good conscience vote for another extension for the project without a guarantee that it will actually be built.
The committee voted against the extension, although it was a close 5-4 vote. Puna council members Matt Kaneali‘i-Kleinfelder and Ashley Kierkiewicz voted in favor, as did Hilo Councilwoman Sue Lee Loy and South Kona Councilwoman Michelle Galimba.
The matter will proceed to the full council with the committee’s unfavorable recommendation.
