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Advocates, officials hope deal won’t delay housing project

Public-private partnership would provide wastewater in exchange for more housing

Shown in this 2020 aerial, the Maui Tropical Plantation (middle left) is the epicenter for the expansive Waikapu Country Town project. County and project officials are hoping a proposed public-private partnership will help move forward the project of nearly 1,500 market-rate and affordable housing units. The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo

Housing advocates and public officials hope an agreement to provide a Waikapu project with county wastewater services in exchange for more housing won’t slow down the long-awaited development.

“We want to get it done, no doubt,” Jeff Ueoka, an attorney with the Waikapu Country Town project, told Maui County Council members on Thursday. “We don’t think this will delay. We think this will help.”

Waikapu Country Town, a planned development of nearly 1,500 homes, is offering to add up to 213 workforce housing units — while removing the same number of market-rate units — under a proposed public-private partnership announced by the county last month. In exchange, the county would let the project hook up to its wastewater treatment system in Kahului in hopes of helping it kickstart construction.

Developer Mike Atherton described the partnership as a “win-win-win” for the county, the project and the community — saving Waikapu Country Town on wastewater costs, providing space for both an elementary and intermediate school and offering up to 500 total workforce units.

While the proposal was praised by residents and public officials alike on Thursday, they also expressed hope that the deal wouldn’t create more delays.

Developer Mike Atherton shares his vision for his proposed Waikapu Country Town project during a visit to the site in 2015. Atherton has spent years pushing forward his mixed-use Waikapu Country Town project, which has drawn praise from residents and public officials alike for making changes in response to the community. The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo

“We’ve had all these proposals pass over the year for affordable housing,” Council Member Mike Molina said during the council’s Planning and Sustainable Land Use Committee meeting. “The community gets excited then lo and behold a snag hits. So that’s why when this proposal came up, the first thing that came to my mind (was), I hope it doesn’t cause any delay with the construction of the homes, and then the community is going to be the one losing again.”

A dream of Atherton’s since he bought he land in 2004, Waikapu Country Town would include 1,433 single-family, multifamily and rural units, with the potential for 146 ohana units; 200,000 square feet of commercial space; 82 acres of parks and open space; 8 miles of sidewalks, paths and trails; 12 acres for a new elementary school; and 910 acres of agricultural preserve land.

Atherton was planning to build a private wastewater treatment plant to service the development. But under the partnership, Waikapu Country Town would temporarily connect to the county’s wastewater treatment plant in Kahului for 100,000 gallons per day, which would allow construction of 150 workforce and 150 market-rate units, Ueoka explained.

Once the county builds its new Central Maui Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant — which Department of Environmental Management Director Eric Nakagawa said is expected to be completed in 2028 — the project would commit to more workforce units.

“Basically it works out because Waikapu Country Town can provide additional residential workforce housing units if it doesn’t have to construct its own wastewater treatment plant,” Ueoka said.

Stan Franco, president of Stand Up Maui, said that state Rep. Troy Hashimoto recently described the potential partnership as one that “could be used as a model for the future of affordable housing on Maui, and we agree.”

“In this partnership the state gets roadsides, the county gets additional affordable housing and the developer gets the infrastructure that he needs to make his development,” Franco told the committee on Thursday. “Everybody wins all the way around.”

Cassandra Abdul, executive director of Na Hale O Maui, said that the nonprofit community land trust “strongly supports these types of projects” and the proposed partnership.

“It can take decades to actually get to the point where you can break ground, and the cost is just astronomical,” Abdul said. “And when you’re talking about wastewater plants, when you’re talking about roads and bridges, there’s no developer that can really do this on their own. … This is just perfect public-private partnership that will move us forward to get these infrastructure done and more affordable and workforce housing available to our community.”

Lucienne de Naie of the Sierra Club Maui said the 46-year-old organization has seen developers and projects in the past make “many wonderful promises made about things that we were thrilled about” but never happened. She urged the county to be “very very clear” in its agreement about what it wants and who will be responsible.

“This is a good project,” de Naie said. “It deserves support. We want it to work. We want the support not to take years and years because there were unclear agreements up front and we didn’t know who was doing what.”

Ueoka thinks the partnership could benefit the project’s timeline.

“We actually feel it will help, because with this temporary (wastewater) connection to Kahului we can get started a little faster,” he said.

Atherton said that “theoretically, if everything went well, we could begin the backbone infrastructure in the latter part of this year.” Water, sewer, roads and other “backbone” work are expected to take about a year or two, then construction of homes could begin, according to Atherton and Ueoka.

The committee recessed discussion of the proposed partnership until 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.

* Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.

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