"I want the state to get that land without spending any state (government) money," said Lingle, who is attending the National Governors Association winter meeting, which begins Saturday. "Our investment would be in the (water, sewer and power systems) to bring it up to a level that could support the kind of development that we are talking about."

The acreage consists of several pieces of land that are part of the former Barbers Point Naval Air Station along Roosevelt Avenue.

While the Navy supports the state's idea for the land's use, "their overall issue is the money that would have been coming in if they could sell it to the private sector," Lingle said.

Lingle, who met with Navy Secretary Donald Winter, said she argued that the land's existing utility and water systems are "extremely expensive" to maintain.

"I told them that if you deduct the cost of (improving) those systems, that land is not valued at what they think its value is," she said.

Lingle said the Navy wants the state and its Democratic congressional delegation, especially Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, chairman of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, and Rep. Neil Abercrombie, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, to present a united front in backing the plan.

"I'm confident that if the congressional delegation gets behind this, we will get this land at no cost," Lingle said.

The idea behind developing the land is to give the Leeward Coast a new economic engine that will include jobs and housing, especially affordable units to help with the state's homeless population, Lingle said.

Lingle said the state has made good progress in setting up transitional beds for homeless people but at the end of their maximum two-year stay, "there still needs to be an affordable rental apartment for them to transition into."

"Right now, those don't exist," she said.

The governor, who has lobbied a number of federal departments since arriving Wednesday, also said she found out in a Justice Department meeting that the state can use a $13 million federal corrections grant for a variety of corrections programs state officials are pursuing.

The grant, authorized about a decade ago for Maui but never spent, had been in limbo while the state tried to find the best way to use it, Lingle said.

The existing Maui Community Correctional Center at Wailuku is overcrowded and now in the middle of a residential area that has grown up around it, Lingle said.

The grant, with an additional $45 million from the state legislature, means that a new, larger facility can be built with community involvement in the planning, design and programs that could be offered, Lingle said.

"Let's really build the kind of facility that we believe will be successful ... secure for the public yet maximizing the possibility that when people are let out, they will be successful in the community," Lingle said.

The governor also met with Jon Dudas, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and came away with the possibility that Hawai'i could be hosting a meeting of international patents directors in the next few months.