Home lands plan
targets Molokai

The state identifies acreage
to support a 417-home community

Looking to trim its list of homestead applicants, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands on Thursday accepted a plan that could one day lead to 417 new houses on nearly 26,000 acres of land on Molokai.

The proposal from the architecture and planning firm Group 70 International follows the department's switch last year from building pockets of 20 houses at a time to creating sustainable communities of up to 500 houses.

"The whole concept has changed from building a house to making the community," said Lloyd Yonenaka, a department spokesman.

Department Director Micah Kane said the Molokai plan is still in its early stages and needs community review before any project can be launched.

The proposal identifies the potential for 417 new Molokai homes to be build in Ualapue, Kapaakea, Makakupaia, Kamiloloa and Kalamaula at a cost of $44.8 million.

Ualapue could see 74 10,000-square-foot residential lots spread over 25 acres. The Kapaakea, Kamiloloa and Makakupaia areas combined could accommodate 286 half-acre lots. And 57 one-acre lots could be developed on Kalamaula.

"What you have there is what the potential can allow," Kane said. "If there is a demand for residential homesteads there, that's where our people have told us, 'This is where we'd like to see it happen.'

"Right now we are at a point to digest the plan," he added.

Kane said the focus now is on resource-driven issues like improving drainage in Kapaakea.

"It isn't so much a design to see a lot more homesteads there as it is to assure that Molokai remains Molokai," Kane said.

Group 70 has redesigned the Hanauma Bay Marine Education Center. In the past it has helped the department develop a master plan for Kauai and assisted with studies for parcels in Kaluwahine and Waimanalo on Oahu.

The firm said it would "create sustainable communities that respect the traditional cultural and subsistence practices that make Molokai unique."

One proposal for Molokai is to subdivide land in Hoolehua that could yield 544 agricultural homesteads. Another would create a wellness center where traditional Hawaiian healing could be practiced.

The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands was created 81 years ago by Congress to place eligible native Hawaiians on more than 200,000 acres of land. It has issued more than 500 residential leases over the past year to native Hawaiian families and plans to offer nearly 2,000 leases in the next 18 months.

There are currently 18,500 home applicants on the department's waiting list, Yonenaka said.

Last week, Maui-based Dowling Co. was chosen for the development of two new projects on Maui, the latest phase of Waiehu Kou and the Villages of Leialii.

Other plans are to develop 326 lots in Kapolei, Yonenaka said, and add 300 more homes in Kona on the Big Island sometime in the future.

The department is also offering educational opportunities within communities, Yonenaka said.

For example, in a development near Kona, an elementary school was built close to a residential area, where commercial spaces and a lot for a hospital have been set aside.

The department has enough funds to develop at least five new communities with the $30 million it will get annually from the Legislature until 2013, Yonenaka said.