Posted on: Saturday, February 26, 2005
Condo project in works on Kaua'i
By Andrew Gomes
Advertiser Staff Writer
A New York-based investment firm plans to transform an old Kaua'i coconut-tree grove into a condominium project for second-home buyers in Waipouli, adding to a major visitor-oriented resurgence on the island's Coconut Coast between Wailua and Kapa'a.
Coconut Plantation Holdings LLC, led by Brickman Associates of New York City, purchased the 12-acre beachfront site next to the Courtyard by Marriott earlier this week from Niu Pia Land Co. Ltd. for about $11 million.
Rod O'Connor, a Brickman principal, said the company plans to design a project that preserves as much of the trees and open space as possible on the land zoned for up to 195 condo units.
O'Connor said he hopes construction can start in about a year if planning and permitting, including a required special management area permit, advance smoothly.
"We're very excited about this project," he said.
The project is one of roughly a half dozen planned or repositioned condo, hotel or time-share developments in the "Coconut Plantation" district undergoing a tourism revival.
Other developments include the former Kaua'i Coconut Beach Resort that opened last month as a Courtyard by Marriott, a 200-unit luxury beachfront condo recently approved for construction, and conversion of the Islander on the Beach hotel into a "condotel" being renovated and sold by the room to individual buyers.
Developers also have plans to build a time-share or condo project on 20 acres on the other side of the Marriott, and rebuild the long-shuttered Coco Palms Hotel nearby.
"That whole corridor, it's really jumped up as far as becoming a stronger resort area," said Sue Kanoho, Kaua'i Visitor Bureau executive director.
Five of the six projects are on land leased from or sold by Niu Pia Land, a company of Kaua'i's Pratt family formerly known as Niu Pia Farms for its history of growing coconut and arrowroot.
Bill Pratt, Niu Pia vice president, said the family business headed by recently re-retired Grove Farm Co. Inc. chief executive David Pratt has been trying to diversify its land ownership on the island by selling some property and using tax-deferred exchanges to acquire real estate on other islands.
"We had so many holdings on Kaua'i, it didn't make sense for it to be tied up. We weren't going to develop it," Bill Pratt said.
The Niu Pia land in Waipouli, once used for commercial crop production, had been rezoned two or more decades ago and offered to developers who built the Islander on the Beach and the Kaua'i Coconut Beach Resort hotels.
The Brickman parcel and a few others were never developed. With the economic upturn over the past few years, however, interest heated up for the last remaining beachfront parcels in the area.
Reach Andrew Gomes at agomes@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8065.
