Isle developer to
get $770,462 refund

By Jerry Tune
Star-Bulletin

The Hawaii Community Development Authority will refund fees to developer Jack Myers after the developer lowered prices at the One Archer Lane condominium on King Street near Ward Avenue.

The authority yesterday approved a refund of affordable housing fees of $770,462, plus accrued interest, according to a formula in the authority's rules that allows for the refund. Myers reduced prices by 10 percent last year.

The refund will be paid quarterly and be based on sales. The first quarterly payment for about 85 sales from August 1998 to April 1999 is expected to be $250,000 plus $14,000 in interest. These sales represents about one-third of the condominium units that were on the market when the price reductions were put into effect last year.

The request from the Myers Corp. was aired at a public hearing last month.

The refund covers only part of the fees paid. The authority retains $1.36 million in affordable housing fees and $3.37 million in public facilities fees paid by the Myers Corp.

"That's almost $15,000 per unit (of the 330 residential units)," said Will Beaton, the corporation's senior vice president in his testimony last month.

On the mainland, these type of fees for luxury projects would be only about $5,000 a unit, he said.

The League of Women Voters last month opposed the adjustment in fees, which were paid instead of developing 66 affordable units. League representative Michelle Spalding Matson said the authority already had relaxed the affordable housing requirement for developers.

The fee schedule was changed in 1995 to encourage development in the slow Hawaii economy. Myers paid $2.13 million based on original sales prices. With the 10 percent price reduction approved last August, the average sales price at One Archer Lane is now $277,000.