Pending land sale stirs Kahuku protest

Residents fear they will be displaced once Campbell Estate sells its plantation acreage

MORE THAN 60 Kahuku residents rallied to "Keep Kahuku Country" yesterday morning, sign-waving to passing traffic on Kamehameha Highway.

The residents said they fear that when the James Campbell Estate sells the property under their plantation-era homes, that they will have nowhere to live.

They point to nearby Velzeyland -- where low-priced rentals were razed to make way for a high-end subdivision -- as their likely fate if they don't band together.

"We want to be able to purchase our homes, or at least have the right to it," said Colinda Salanoa, 50, who with her husband, Molia, pays lease-rent on a three bedroom, one bath home on a month-to-month basis for their family of seven.

The Campbell Estate announced last summer that it would be selling the last 2,000 acres it owns in Kahuku.

About 70 residents occupy plantation homes sitting on land that the estate is selling.

"The real question that brought people together today is that Campbell Estate is processing land sales, and the community hasn't been included," resident Ralph Makaiau said.

Campbell Estate isn't willing to subdivide large tracts with hundreds of acres into house-sized lots, Campbell Vice President Bert Hatton said in a telephone interview yesterday. That would require expensive sewer improvements and flood mitigation that the estate is not willing to do.

But any buyer of the land, if it is developed at all, will have to do those things and consider the welfare of current residents, Hatton said. "In this town you tend not to get anything done unless you have the support of the community," he said.

People at yesterday's rally don't feel assured of that, and said they believe that Campbell must sell by the end of 2006, when the estate dissolves.

Hatton said the end of the year is not a deadline for selling the land, since all estate assets will become property of the new James Campbell Co. LLC. "There's no connection between the end of the estate and our sale of land," he said.

Since the closing of Kahuku Sugar in 1972, about 100 former plantation homes have been sold to their occupants. Another 177 homes sit on land the city owns and cannot sell until sewer and flooding work is done.

Residents of the former sugar company houses pay between $250 and $850 monthly rent to the nonprofit Kahuku Village Association. In many cases two or three generations live together, and adults work multiple jobs.

"The moment somebody comes here and builds a million-dollar-plus mansion, property taxes are going to go up 300 percent, like they did in Sunset Beach," Makaiau said. "And people that live here don't get those kind of raises."

State Sen. Clayton Hee (D, Kahaluu-Laie) said yesterday in Kahuku that he believes the state could buy the coastal lands -- and perhaps the nine-hole Kahuku golf course under its new Legacy Lands Act.

City Council Chairman Donovan Dela Cruz wants the city to buy the golf course, which it operates, from Campbell Estate. Expanding it to 18 holes could provide a place for flood-mitigation work needed to allow the sale of individual plantation houses, he said.

Fine ideas, residents said yesterday, but they still need a place to live.

"If no more house, where are you going?" asked former sugar worker Angel Adversalo.

Babes Fely , 45, comes from a plantation worker family, like most of her friends and neighbors lining the highway yesterday in front of Kahuku High School.

"My grandmother is here, my mother is here, I'm here and my children are here, and we want to stay in Kahuku."