A partnership led by a Dallas-based real estate investment firm has purchased the 304-acre Pulelehua working-class housing community in West Maui from Maui Land & Pineapple Co. for $15 million.

ML&P announced the finalizing of the sale June 3 in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission but did not name a buyer.

Paul Cheng, president and CEO of USA Infrastructure Investments LP, confirmed that Maui Oceanview LP, a partnership led by USA Infrastructure Investments, was the buyer for Pulelehua.

“We intend to develop long term luxury and workforce rental housing as soon as permits are acquired,” Cheng said in an email Monday.

Dallas-based USAII is a real estate investment firm in commercial and residential development and property management in 24 cities, according to its website. The firm, in business since 1978, has developed high-rise commercial offices, residential communities, warehouses and specialty shopping centers.

In fact, USAII lists the 3.8-acre Maalaea Harbor Shops off Honoapiilani Highway as one of its properties. It purchased the shops, through Maui Harbor Shops LP, for $13.4 million in late July.

ML&P said in its filing that the proceeds from the sale were used to pay off and retire the company’s term loan with American AgCredit. The lender held 3,700 acres in West Maui and Upcountry and equity interests in Kapalua Water Co. and Kapalua Wastewater Treatment Co. as collateral, according to ML&P quarterly reports.

The loan was to come due Aug. 1 with an increase in interest payments April 1 if ML&P had not reduced the principal to less than $12.5 million, according to ML&P’s 2015 annual report. ML&P announced in its first quarter report, released in April, that the deal for Pulelehua was in the works.

The sale resulted in a gain of about $14.3 million, which will be included in the company’s operating results for the quarter ending June 30, the latest SEC filing said.

The sale leaves ML&P with about 23,000 acres on Maui, based on the 2015 annual report.

Pulelehua, near the Kapalua-West Maui Airport, has been more than a decade in the making with calls for community involvement in the planning of the project going back to 2004. In its latest annual report, ML&P said that the project was designed for 882 single-family and multifamily residences, 95,000 square feet of commercial and retail space, an elementary school, churches and a community center.

The site has conforming state and county land use designations, according to the annual report. Development costs were projected at $600,000 with a development price tag of $300 million to $500 million.

Pulelehua represented about 20 percent of the acreage ML&P had in various stages of development, according to the annual report. There are 900 acres in the Kapalua resort, which includes Kapalua Mauka and Kapalua Central Resort, and the 300-acre Hali’imaile Town project, which would be “a holistic traditional community with agriculture and sustainability as core design elements,” the annual report said.

* Lee Imada can be reached at leeimada@mauinews.com.