Vote: Leave ‘stacking’ zoning alone

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WAILUKU - The Maui Planning Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to advise the County Council to abandon efforts to remove "stacking" from the M1 light-industrial and M2 heavy-industrial zoning ordinances.

"Stacking" or "pyramiding" is the practice of including all the permitted uses from lower levels of zoning in higher levels. Under either name, it means that if you have M2 zoning - which would allow you to, for example, operate a sugar mill - you can also, without further ado, operate a restaurant or build apartments, which are permitted under lower B1, B2 or B3 business zoning.

It is not clear whether the de-pyramiding measure still has a champion in the council. It was introduced by former Council Chairman Riki Hokama, who retired at the end of the last council term because of term limits. His bills, on industrial and hotel zoning (see related story), remained on the table, and in March the council sent them to the county's three planning commissions for comment.

That set off alarms among landowners, developers, property managers, lawyers and small-business operators. Howard Hanzawa, vice president of Kaanapali Land Management Corp., which has some M-zoned land from its earlier existence as Pioneer Mill, said that when he raised the issue at the council, he was advised to form a working group to detail the concerns.

"It was easy to find people who wanted to be on the committee," he said during public testimony at the commission meeting Tuesday. The informal group came up with several objections:

* The bill, if passed, would transform hundreds of properties from properly zoned to existing but nonconforming uses. That, in turn, would bring them under other ordinances that say that if repairs (for example, after a fire or storm) would cost more than 50 percent of the value of the property, they will not be permitted.

Later Clyde Murashige, vice president of A&B Properties, said rebuilding an older nonconforming property is one of the most difficult of all real estate operations, as he learned after the SeaWatch restaurant at Wailea was damaged by fire.

* Condominium owners might be required to make disclosures of their newly nonconforming status in sales offers, scaring off buyers.

* Nonconforming properties would have a difficult time getting financing or insurance. Tom Cerizo, a retired insurance agent and owner of a potential nonconforming property, said that insurers would charge a premium to handle such property, if they would insure it at all.

* There would be unintended long-term effects on the overall economy. Real estate lawyer Tom Welch said he drove down Alamaha Street and counted 54 small businesses, of which 41 would suddenly become nonconforming under Hokama's bill.

Alamaha "is the heartbeat of our economy," he said. It is where ventures start, expand or fail, to be replaced by new ventures.

Jac Kean, a commercial developer for nearly 30 years, said that without the flexibility allowed by the current method, when a vacancy occurs, it would take longer to find a new tenant. Instead of being full and vibrant, commercial properties would show empty spaces and then decline.

* Principles of smart growth and mixed use call for a variety of uses within an area, so de-pyramiding would seem to be going backward.

After hearing more than 20 testifiers against the change and none for, the commissioners were persuaded.

Commission member Warren Shibuya said of the conflict with smart-growth ideas, "We've got a disconnect here. It would be very embarrassing if this body approves this."

Worse than that, commission member Bruce U'u said that if he recommended making Sam Sato's noodle restaurant in the light-industrial Millyard nonconforming, "I could not look my mother in the eye."

The commissioners were puzzled about what inspired the bill. Administrative planning officer Joe Alueta said there is an issue with light-industrial zoning: It's relatively cheap, so that commercial users sometimes crowd out genuine industrial users.

These users, especially those who need "dead storage" (like heavy construction companies who need places to park their bulldozers), then go looking for the cheapest land they can find, which is always agricultural land.

Getting state special or conditional uses to turn low-quality ag land into baseyards is not the best approach, Alueta said.

Welch said it bothered him that this proposal came out of the council, instead of the general plan-community plan process, where there would have been general discussion first.

Over the years, the council has occasionally dealt with the shortage of light-industrial land by conditional zoning: The Central Maui Baseyard, for example, is not permitted to have restaurants.

Alueta said his belief is that the county should grapple with the issue directly by designating appropriate land for genuine industrial uses as part of overall planning. It would, inevitably, be agricultural land, but he said he hoped it would not be prime farmland.

Shibuya noted that some areas, like Kula, have no light-industrial zoning at all, even though farmers need places to take their equipment for repair, and the repair shops need light-industrial zoning.

The planning department is working on a proposal for a new, M3, category that would be limited to real industrial uses, which would accomplish Hokama's goals without interfering with existing projects.

* Harry Eagar can be reached at heagar@mauinews.com.