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WMPA in the News
Kaanapali Ocean Villas time share
deferred for more talks
By HARRY
EAGAR, Staff Writer. 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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