'Ewa gets money for road improvements

By Scott Ishikawa
Advertiser Staff Writer

Developers and landowners in Leeward O'ahu have agreed to pay the state's share of six badly needed road projects in the rapidly growing 'Ewa region, helping to smooth traffic flow for a population of 100,000 projected to settle there within the next decade.

The developers would pay $38 million for the improvements by charging an impact fee on each of the 15,000 housing units planned for the area, as well as fees for new retail, industrial or office space and hotel rooms. That would account for about 20 percent of the full $194 million price tag, with the federal government paying the rest.

The projects include new H-1 Freeway interchanges in Kapolei and Makakilo, construction of a north-south road from Kapolei to the H-1, completing Kapolei Parkway from 'Ewa Beach to Ko Olina and widening Fort Barrette Road to four lanes and Fort Weaver Road to six lanes.

All six projects in the 'Ewa Highway Master Plan are supposed to be finished by 2010 although some may be completed earlier.

"We hope this will lead to the timely development of these highway projects," said state transportation director Brian Minaai.

The state has worked with area developers in paying for or building individual freeway off-ramps and interchanges, but never involving multiple road projects in one region designed to ease major traffic congestion, Minaai said.

Under a bill discussed yesterday by the City Council, developers would be charged $1,836 per new single-family dwelling unit and $1,245 per multi-family unit. New hotel rooms, should they be built, would be charged $1,003 per unit, and retail and office space would be charged $4,053 and $3,403 respectively per 1,000 square feet. Industrial-use land would be charged $2,019 per 1,000 square foot.

The bill at the council also calls for the collection of fees through the issuing of city building permits.

"This would be a unique solution to a unique problem," said City Council member Duke Bainum, who introduced the measure with council Chairman John DeSoto.

The developers and landowners in the 'Ewa highway plan are Castle & Cooke Kunia Inc., Campbell Estate, Finance Realty Ltd., Gentry Homes Ltd., Haseko ('Ewa) Inc., Ko Olina Development LLC, Land Use Research Foundation, Schuler Homes and the state Housing & Community Development Corp. of Hawai'i.

Dick Kaku of Kaku Associates, a transportation consulting firm working with the state and developers on the impact fee agreement, said it would be up to the developers whether the impact fee would be passed on to the homebuyer. All parties have worked on reaching an agreement for the past 12 years, but have made significant progress in the last two or three years, Kaku said.

Kaku said he has helped negotiate other public-private development agreements in California, with developers contributing between 15 to 40 percent for road infrastructure costs.

"But those agreements in California that required a higher percentage contribution from the developers were also done over a much longer period of time," he said. "I don't recall such a shared-cost deal of this magnitude over a short period of time."

Dan Davidson, executive director of the Land Use Research Foundation, said the developers are in support of the council measure because it makes clear how much each party will be charged for each housing unit. Under the plan, no impact fee would be assessed for any development project completed before January 2002.

"What you see is what you get; these are real numbers, real figures," Davidson said at a City Council hearing yesterday. "The bill also makes clear that the money will be spent on these six specific highway projects."

Bainum said the part of the bill that spells out exactly how to collect the money still needs to be resolved.

"There are questions about how the impact fee money will be collected and other issues, but I'm cautiously optimistic this one will work out," Bainum said.

Other methods of collecting the money under discussion are having the state build the roads and then having the developers reimburse the state, having the developer complete the smaller projects on the list and be credited with the work against their impact fees, or having developers float a revenue bond through the Legislature to pay for road construction, then repay the money through the impact fees.

DeSoto said the agreement is needed to help government catch up on much-needed road infrastructure.

"We've been putting the cart before the horse for too long now," DeSoto said. "We need to do something now."

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