Maui coastal reserve plan worries church
By Chris Hamilton
The Maui News
OLOWALU — Members of the self-described "small and poor" Olowalu Lanakila Hawaiian Church said they were frightened and frustrated when they arrived at a Maui Planning Commission meeting this week that could possibly have determined the fate of their congregation.
The commission was deciding whether to accept the final environmental assessment for an ambitious Maui County proposal for a coastal reserve along an eight-mile stretch of the Honoapiilani Highway.
The county concept is to maintain an undeveloped shoreline in open space as a roughly 400-foot-wide buffer from the pali and Papalaua Wayside Park to Puamana Park near Lahaina.
It coincides with the separate effort by the state Department of Transportation to realign Honoapiilani Highway inland and away from the eroding shoreline, planning staff said. Planning Director Jeff Hunt said that the final environmental assessment and open space buffer is connected to the state project in that it is intended to prevent new development makai of the new highway alignment.
The commissioners voted 6-3 in favor of accepting the final environmental assessment and said this was the first step in a process that will require zoning and community plan changes that must be approved by both the Maui Planning Commission and County Council.
Nearly all the buffer land in question is believed to be zoned agricultural or conservation. None of the existing homes would be affected by the plan or proposed zoning changes, planners said.
"If we don't preserve what we have now, we will lose it," said Long Range Planning Department Senior Planner Kathleen Ross Aoki.
The next phase, which is granting the community plan amendment, probably won't go before the council until this fall, planners said. Before that, however, the Planning Department is required to hold public hearings, which will require notice to everyone who lives within a 500-foot radius of the affected lands.
The church got an early reprieve at Tuesday's meeting when a potential change in zoning to open space was deleted from the plan. But it was not before being scared to death, said church Treasurer Bill Johnston.
The meeting had brought out the church faithful as well as a few well-invested landowners and developers who fear that the blanket open space designation was an indication of what the county's ultimate decision will be.
If so, the open space designation could drastically slice away at their property values, landowner Peter Martin said.
Bill Frampton, a partner in Olowalu Town LLC, said the park plan does not jeopardize the investment group's plan to build 1,500 housing units as well as shops and parks since Olowalu Town would be mauka of the open space buffer.
A greater concern for Olowalu Town LLC could be that its location doesn't sit within the county's new proposed urban growth boundaries within its draft Maui Island Plan. That plan, which is separate from the process before the commission, is designed to limit urban growth to well-defined boundaries as Maui County faces future population growth.
Frampton said he was upset that the proposed town's master plan was not included in the final environmental assessment. He called it a matter of respect. His group plans to use private money to create 330 acres of parks within its 620-acre site, Frampton said. That's worth noting, he said.
Ross Aoki said Frampton's group simply didn't give them the information until four months after the public comment period had ended.
Before the pali-Puamana coastal reserve can really become a county park, plan opponents also said now the public will have to wait for the government or perhaps the Maui Coastal Land Trust to buy private land.
Maui Coastal Land Trust Executive Director Dale Bonar said trust officials are already trying to convince property owners to donate the oceanfront real estate that could be worth more than $100 million. But it's an uphill battle, he noted.
Frampton and others also called the final environmental assessment on the county's plan sloppily prepared. Commissioners agreed and tacked on another amendment calling on county planners to better ferret out land ownership and other technical problems.
Commissioners William Iaconetti, Bruce U'u and John Guard IV cast "no" votes, agreeing that the final environmental study should be more refined.
"I'm all for changing agricultural zoning to open space as long as it's not my property," U'u said.
The Olowalu churchgoers were upset because the Planning Department's 537-page final environmental assessment placed the church grounds in open space, where nothing but park facilities can be built.
The church land has remained relatively undeveloped since a sugar cane fire incinerated the church's wooden features in 1930. What remains of the church, which was built in 1836, are Romanesque ruins of lava rock and coral walls where weddings and other special services are still performed.
Contrary apparently to what some county officials believed, the 35-member congregation continues to meet every Sunday at 9 a.m. in the squat gray cinder-block building next door, said church Moderator Adeline Rodrigues.
For about a dozen years, the congregation also has labored to raise more than $400,000 to build a new chapel next to the old. Church members believe they need about $300,000 more to complete the project.
"It was not our intent to hurt them," Ross Aoki said. "It is our intent to help them. If they own that property and there is a church on there, the county will not take that away from them."
Ross Aoki apologized to the church leaders. Planning Director Jeff Hunt was the first to suggest removing the open space designation from the church grounds and parcels where burials are located nearby.
Frampton, coincidentally, has offered to give the historic burial sites back to the church members. When the old Olowalu Sugar Co. owed the land, it regularly tilled the soil to plant cane. The burial sites were disturbed enough that when there is a heavy rain, human bones will still occasionally wash up into a yard, Rodrigues said.
On Wednesday, Rodrigues said she was pleased with the Planning Department and commission's actions. Except for how they treated Frampton, she said.
"I want Olowalu Town to happen," she said. "Why not? At least give them a chance."
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