Councilman to
scrap Ko Olina
down-zone
resolution

DeSoto says he'll "file" the
proposal after big plans are
announced to develop the land

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Ko Olina Councilman John DeSoto says he has had a change of heart about his resolution to down-zone land at the Ko Olina resort, introduced just before word came out last week that big plans for the resort in his district are about to start turning into real developments.

He now will kill the resolution, he said.

"I was planning to go out and down-zone the area," DeSoto said in an interview yesterday.

He filed a resolution to that effect just last Wednesday. And then on Thursday, stories broke about big plans by Ko Olina Partners, the private Hawaii-mainland group that bought more than 340 acres of the coastal resort property a year ago.

His resolution, if it passed, could have killed most of the planned development. DeSoto now says he will ask the City Council to "file" it, meaning it won't go to committee and is effectively dead.

He said he hadn't heard what the developer really had in mind for the West Oahu resort, had been receiving a lot of concerned input from the community and thought a rezoning proposal would be a way of "keeping the developer in check."

No sooner had he introduced the resolution, DeSoto said, then the news broke that Ko Olina Partners is ready to move ahead on a 700-unit time-share development, should finish its $10-$11 million 270-slip marina development by early next year, is ready to build homes and has longer-term plans that could bring more than $1 billion in investments and thousands of jobs to the area.

DeSoto said his real concern was that most of the big promises made more than a decade ago by the original developer of Ko Olina, Herbert Horita, haven't come to anything.

DeSoto said he met over the weekend with Jeff Stone, one of Ko Olina Partners' local managing directors, "and he assured me everything is on track."

DeSoto said his response was "thank you, this is what we need."

Ko Olina Partners issued a statement yesterday saying it had met with DeSoto and reassured him. Stone said in the statement he made a commitment to DeSoto that $1 million will quickly go into improvements and maintenance of the shoreline park, with toilets, showers and parking open to the public. Stone said he agreed "to further expedite the development with an infusion of $10 million in new construction."