Maui News, August 25th, 2004
WAILUKU – Starwood Vacation Ownership’s bid to build a second time-share resort at North Beach was deferred Tuesday in an attempt to head off a full-fledged contested case. Lawyers for Starwood and for West Maui Preservation Association, which had filed a request to intervene, asked the Maui Planning Commission to defer action so they could try to negotiate a settlement. The commission gave them until Sept. 14.
Previous intervention bids, led by West Maui Preservation’s attorney Isaac Hall, had resulted in private agreements and also commission conditions on wide shoreline setbacks for the four hotel lots at North Beach. One of the questions this time will be: How big is the resort?
A big change over the last 16 years has been a reduction in the total number of hotel units permitted. Zoning would have allowed 3,200. Agreements and conditions have cut that to 1,950.
But the first two resorts, Westin Kaanapali Ocean Villas and the new one proposed next door, have used “lockout” designs, in which a time share can be split into two parts.
The second Kaanapali Ocean Villas is listed as a 258-unit time share, but is that 516 with lockouts?
Planning Director Mike Foley has a “guesstimate” that North Beach will end up with about 1,600 units, which would fall well within the limit, depending upon how lockouts are treated.
For purposes of determining parking requirements, a lockout is treated as one-third of a unit. The biggest change in Starwood’s plans since its design was submitted to the Urban Design Review Board in May has been in parking. The county requirement is half a stall per hotel unit. Add in a fraction for lockouts, and the requirement grows to 0.83 stall per unit.
After meeting the community and county planners, Starwood has added another level to its parking garage and is now proposing 1.75 parking stalls per unit, or more than 500 for the project.
Other issues brought up in the public testimony Tuesday were drainage, traffic and contamination of near-shore waters.
The commission voted 8-0 to defer the matter for three weeks.
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