A proposal by A&B Properties to build a luxury six-condominium development along an exclusive oceanfront section of Kahala Avenue has gotten the approval of the city’s top planner.

George Atta, director of Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting, filed his recommendations late last week, just ahead of Labor Day weekend.

Atta’s opinion is now set to go before the City Council. If the Council accepts the recommendation, A&B has said it will start work soon and expects to complete the project, estimated to cost $40 to $45 million, in 2019.

The move is a setback for a group of Kahala residents who have publicly opposed the project from the beginning. They testified and lobbied against it and even formed a nonprofit community organization, Friends of Kahala, which is a plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking to block the development. Their case is pending in circuit court.

In his recommendation, Atta concluded the project met all existing requirements of the zoning district, will have fewer than the maximum number of dwellings allowed, will not exceed the 25-foot height limit and is consistent with the residential character of the neighborhood.

Opponents Fear Domino Effect

Contrary to the planning director’s glowing recommendation, Friends of Kahala have said the condominium project would bring unprecedented density to the area and have a domino effect as other owners of large properties will be emboldened to use the same tactic to build additional homes on what have previously been single-family lots. The result, they have said, will be higher home prices, higher taxes and increased density.

The group’s arguments were highlighted by veteran journalist Denby Fawcett in a Civil Beat column last month.

Fawcett lamented the fact that despite its perceived drawbacks, the project complies with zoning requirements and needs no variances.

“But I am not sure A&B’s Kahala condos will end up helping anybody except wealthy out-of-towners seeking second homes or a place to park their money,” she wrote.

“You have to wonder about changing something that for more than a century has been a single-family-home neighborhood into a condo development,” Fawcett wrote.

Another Viewpoint

Denby and I both grew up in Kahala, although we were separated by several years and lived in different ends of the neighborhood. We both have ended up back in our old neighborhood, although again on different sides of Kahala, nearly two miles apart.

We share a dismay at the direction the neighborhood has taken a nostalgia for the Hawaii that we glimpsed as children and young adults.

But I doubt very much that A&B’s six luxury homes are going to have any negative impact in Kahala.

The sad fact is that the elegant, low key, beachside neighborhood we grew up in is long gone.

First, probably in the 1950s and early 1960s, came what my mother used to call “mainland houses,” a category which included larger homes, those built of brick or with double-wall construction, or with two stories. Uncommon at first, they became the norm. Then in the 1980s privacy walls became the rage and spread like a plague. Throughout the neighborhood welcoming hedges surrounding tropical yards were displaced by the cold “Keep Out” message conveyed by now ubiquitous six-foot walls and latched or locked gates.

Then came the 1 percent with their mansions built on a scale the rest of us mere mortals have trouble imagining, and behind them swept in the wannabe 1 percenters with their architecturally challenged McMansions, most unfortunately designed and built without regard for their tropical surroundings.

And if you walk on the beach in Kahala, you’ll quickly realize that almost all of those oceanfront estates with their obligatory mansions are usually unoccupied, left empty empty except for a few days or weeks a year when their owners might drop in for a visit.

There’s no doubt that the old days of Kahala are long gone.

So What’s The Problem?

Opponents of A&B’s project raise several objections. They object to the density of the project, which I believe refers to replacing the two homes previously on the property with six luxury homes on the same single-family lot.

But let’s face it. This is not your everyday single-family lot.

The project site at 4607 Kahala Avenue is one of 30 properties purchased in bulk by A&B from Japanese billionaire Genshiro Kawamoto, who became notorious for letting his portfolio of luxury homes go to ruin, bringing the wrath of the community as well as city officials. All but nine of the former Kawamoto properties had been resold by A&B as of early August, according to testimony on behalf of the company during a public hearing last month.

The proposed development includes three buildings, one along the Kahala Avenue side of the 53,532-square-foot lot and two on the ocean side. Each structure will include two single-family homes, one on the ground floor and another on the second floor. Stacking the approximately 5,000 feet of living space in each residence will allow retention of more open space and reduce the apparent visual density, according to project documents.

The planned homes will be stacked one on top of the other in three buildings. The three buildings would apparently have a total footprint of around 15,000 square feet, covering just 30 percent of the lot. There are many properties throughout Kahala, both along the ocean and mauka, where buildings fill a much greater proportion of the available land area, and even a few with nearly as much total living area.

And frankly, I don’t see any reason to believe that a single out-sized mansion on more than an acre is inherently preferable to three large buildings spread out over the 1.3 acre parcel. I don’t believe the neighborhood would be better served by one rich absentee owner than six well-off owners.

Although the proposed homes will definitely be high priced, the asking prices are consistent with what’s going on in the neighborhood. There are dozens of properties in Kahala that have sold for more than $5 million and perhaps two dozen near $10 million. So these prices, while high, aren’t unique.

The high prices being paid for homes along Kahala Avenue will eventually trickle down to the rest of us in the form of rising property values and taxes, but the damage can’t be tied to the A&B project. The damage has already been done.

So am I happy about A&B building six more multimillion-dollar, oversized luxury homes? No. But neither do I think they’ll be the end of Kahala as we know it, as some seem to feel.

The Kahala we remember is already long gone.