A large Kaua'i landowner is proposing to develop 350 to 500 homes in Po'ipu in an effort that would help ease part of the Island's high housing demand by converting mostly pasture and scrub land into a residential subdivision at the resort area.

The Eric A. Knudsen Trust is seeking government approvals to develop the homes on 203 acres it owns between the Kiahuna Golf Club and the Weliweli subdivision mauka of the Marriott Waiohai Beach Club time-share.

The project, named Village at Po'ipu, is projected to contain 216 to 369 single-family homes on about 150 acres, and 134 multifamily homes on nine acres.

About 12 acres would be made into parks. And about 20 acres would be maintained as archaeological preserves, including areas around two lava tubes designated critical habitats for the endangered Kaua'i cave wolf spider and Kaua'i cave amphipod.

Stacey Wong, trustee for the developer, said the project is in an area that was slated for residential growth 30 years ago and is being filled out by nearby projects such as Kukui'ula and Kiahuna Mauka subdivisions.

The Knudsen trust, in an environmental impact statement preparation notice recently filed with the state, said the project isn't likely to have a significant negative impact on natural or cultural resources, and fits with the designated residential use of the land on the County General Plan.

The project site was once part of a network of taro fields, ditches and living settlements, which by the 1930s were out of use. Most of the property was not converted for sugar cultivation, and reverted to pasture.

County zoning on the site is a mix of residential and open zoning, the latter of which allows a variety of uses including agriculture and single-family homes.

Wong said construction of an initial phase of 50 lots for single-family homes on residential-zoned land should start in the next couple of months. The lots are being sold to a company planning to build roughly 2,000-square-foot plantation-style houses. That sale has not been completed, so Wong said it was premature to identify the buyer.

The Knudsen trust expects it will take at least two years to gain approvals to develop the rest of the property, including 124 acres of the 203-acre site that are in the state's agricultural district and would need state Land Use Commission reclassification for urban use. The trust recently petitioned the LUC for such reclassification.

The total development cost for infrastructure of Village at Po'ipu is estimated at $34 million.

Wong said that given recent home sales in the area, the trust expects a majority of Village at Po'ipu buyers to be from off island, with a sizeable group of Kaua'i residents. "It's really hard to tell what the final mix will be," he said.

The Knudsen trust is one of Kaua'i's major private landowners, with about 4,000 acres of mostly agriculture and open-zoned property in Koloa and Po'ipu. The trust was established in the early 1920s in the name of former territorial legislator, rancher, author and storyteller Eric A. Knudsen, who died in 1957.