Almost a decade after the end of sugar production largely sucked the economic life out of Waialua, the North Shore's most populous community is pinning its revival hopes on establishing more housing, farming, retailing and maybe even a golf course and vacation lodge in the area.

While the North Shore's reputation as a surfing mecca has been a boon to tourism and real estate in some areas, Waialua has yet to recover from the economic hit it took when the Waialua Sugar Mill and Plantation closed in 1996.

The community of about 8,000 residents between Hale'iwa and Mokule'ia sits in the shadow of the idle sugar mill smokestack.

Area schools are Waialua's largest employer. Some diversified farming continues, but the community population has shrunk as limited job opportunities force former agriculture workers to move away. In turn, businesses have closed, buildings are deteriorating and major landowners are investing little in their property.

So the community has come together to draw up a 240-page master plan that outlines a possible revitalization.

The plan, financed with a $200,000 city appropriation five years ago, could hold lessons for other rural Hawai'i communities that have suffered economically since the demise of large-scale agriculture plantations, the authors said.

"It's really a model for how to stimulate a rural post-plantation community, and help them retain their rural character but infuse some economic activity," said Jeff Overton, a plan author and chief environmental planner with Honolulu-based design firm Group 70 International.

Group 70 produced the plan after two years of meetings with community members and elected officials.

Despite being driven by concerned residents, Waialua's master plan is somewhat controversial because it struggles to balance community desires to add jobs and housing options with maintaining the town's character.

One of the linchpins of the plan is developing 300 to 500 homes over 10 years or more mostly on farmland that is largely fallow. More housing, many residents say, is needed in Waialua, which according to census figures had a drop in population and homes between 1990 and 2000.

"People could use homes — that's the most needy thing in Waialua," said Ralph Rego, a 69-year-old former harvesting superintendent at Waialua Sugar who was born in the neighborhood. "People got to live with their parents. No more housing."

Rego now is a security guard at the old mill and stock person at a neighborhood liquor store.

Many of Waialua's lost homes were Dole Food Co. plantation houses at Mill Camp — a cluster of employee housing available to Waialua Sugar retirees at nominal rent for as long as they and their spouses live.

Mill Camp homes, some dating to the mid-1900s or earlier, dwindled since sugar's reign began to wind down on O'ahu in the 1970s. In 1997, a year after Waialua Sugar closed, there were 115 Mill Camp homes. Today there are an estimated 60 to 65.

Because children of Waialua Sugar retirees cannot live in Mill Camp homes after their parents die, much of the younger generation has left town.

The planning study also said deteriorating housing is creating more of a transient renter population with little long-term commitment to the community.

But how to replace the lost homes and add homes that will help stimulate higher spending in the community and justify other improvements without changing Waialua's rural character is up for debate.

Jenny Vierra, president of the community group Friends for Waialua Town, said residents participating in the planning process had a wide range of concerns over housing, including density and prices.

"It was at times controversial," she said. "We knew we couldn't make everyone happy, but I think the process worked well."

The planning report said many Waialua residents acknowledge the need for "limited residential development as additional support for retail/service businesses; providing affordable housing for existing residents and workforce housing for an increased population base."

The plan suggests a variety of options, including limited rural residential development of five or six homes per acre — 200 to 225 total — between what's left of Mill Camp and two long lanes of newer homes along Farrington Highway. Prices would be low to mid-range for Waialua.

Other options include 100 more moderate- to high-priced — but not luxury — homes at five or six homes per acre on two other mostly vacant agriculture parcels. Replacing existing Mill Camp homes could add another roughly 125 homes, or 450 at the top end of options.

Integrating an 18-hole golf course among many homes would reduce the maximum number of suggested homes to 325 and increase property values, though the planning study noted mixed support and opposition to the golf idea.

Dole, a private company affiliated with longtime Hawai'i community and home developer Castle & Cooke, owns most of the land identified for potential housing development.

Ron Nishihara, Castle & Cooke's North Shore project manager, said the company was surprised and encouraged by the community's request for new homes, but is also mindful of resident desires to preserve Waialua's character.

"It is very special, and we don't want to destroy that," he said.

Another possible development idea in the plan is a lodge with 75 to 100 rooms on Waialua's only vacant oceanfront parcel, 15 acres owned by the Bonsall Trust of Santa Barbara, Calif.

The planning study said Waialua's out-of-the-way location creates a financial risk even for a small lodge, though the Bonsall Trust has expressed an interest in working with adjacent landowner Dole to integrate rural home development with a potential lodge.

Plan consultant John M. Knox & Associates said a minimum of 300 new homes are needed to support significant investment in the town's deteriorating commercial core, which mainly consists of a small dilapidated shopping center and former sugar mill warehouse buildings leased to about 30 mostly small manufacturing businesses.

Waialua Shopping Center is the primary local provider of goods and services in the community, with about 20 tenants including a couple convenience stores and cafes. A gas station, library and post office anchor the center, which is not well maintained.

The plan study estimated that renovating and expanding the center with six to nine more retailers, including a medium-size grocery store, could recapture $7 million of $27 million that Waialua residents spend outside the community each year, or nearly as much as the $8 million that they spend in Waialua.

"It wouldn't take a lot to do some architectural improvements and some landscaping improvements to the shopping center," Group 70 planner Overton said. "We're not trying to redo Hale'iwa Town. A visitor attraction is not really the theme here."

But the planning study said the center owner, Gilman Trust, and its lessee, Sugar-Pine Development, have expressed little interest in improving the center.

Dole also is encouraged in the plan to renovate and expand its warehouse complex at the old mill, the only significant light industrial-zoned land on the North Shore.

Expanding agriculture, what Waialua has historically relied on as its economic engine, has been difficult after sugar's demise. After experimenting with diversified agriculture, Dole's only farming in the area comprises 24 acres of cacao.

Independent farmers raise tomato, papaya, banana, asparagus, mango, seed corn and other crops on Dole land — but many small operators have trouble because Dole has been reluctant to issue long-term leases. Part of the problem is that a city ordinance prohibits leasing farm parcels that are not subdivided, an onerous requirement that Dole is trying to change.

Dole hopes a major industry advance will come from setting up a University of Hawai'i agricultural research center in Waialua, a project for which the Legislature recently appropriated financing.

Other suggestions in the master plan include expanding and better promoting the area's Farmers Market, and creating a civic center with a new fire station, public library and community center. Work is already under way for relocating the Waialua fire station.

Creating a greenbelt park and public shoreline access along Ki'i Ki'i Stream and the 15-acre Bonsall Trust property envisioned for the lodge is another idea, along with creating a "village green" town square by re-routing Goodale Avenue into a one-way traffic loop around an expanded "downtown Waialua."

Overton said it is envisioned that master plan suggestions can be implemented over 10 to 20 years.

"It's really one piece at a time," he said. "It's not a wholesale redevelopment."

Lowell Chun, head of the city Department of Planning and Permitting's Community Action Plans Branch, said homes and residents typically come first in building communities, followed by businesses, and that's the way he expects Waialua will evolve if it is to improve.

"The rooftops come first, then the retail, then the other businesses," he said.

Implementing major parts of the plan will take tens of millions of dollars from private and public sources, and include some potentially difficult zoning changes. But Chun said a community-driven master plan will help keep the plan from just collecting dust on a shelf.

"It helps convince developers and lenders," he said. "Plans are very important working instruments for communities to implement the futures they define for themselves."

Other communities where plans have started to produce results include Waipahu, though others such as Wahiawa have had more difficulty.

Vierra, the Friends for Waialua Town president and a one-time sugar mill employee who has lived in Waialua for more than 50 years, said her community's plan is a necessary tool to move forward.

"I look at it as a beginning," she said.

Reach Andrew Gomes at agomes@honoluluadvertiser.com.