Top executives at the company behind a major residential development near Turtle Bay Resort previously were high-ranking officers with an international developer that has frequently come under fire for environmental practices and community complaints.

At least six executives at Arete Collective, the co-developer of new residential units planned near Turtle Bay Resort, including its chief executive officer and co-founder, Rebecca Buchan, were on staff or under contract to Discovery Land Co. between 2012 and 2020.

Discovery Land Co. is not a part of the Turtle Bay project. But the private corporation has a record of aggressively pursuing luxury projects over local opposition, sometimes through litigation, during the period Buchan and her Arete colleagues were helping run the company.

A Civil Beat review of more than a dozen Discovery projects shows that several have led to environmental lawsuits and scrutiny from oversight agencies, including the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation and the Global Coral Reef Alliance.

In 2019 Buchan also took on the role of Discovery’s chief operating officer and participated in executive-level meetings where operations and projects were discussed, and also hired and fired DLC employees, according to a court document submitted by Discovery. That year she also proposed an even closer collaboration between her design company, Denton House, and Discovery on future developments.

While their relationship ended acrimoniously not long after, Discovery described Buchan as a “trusted business associate” who was “familiar with DLC’s business practices.” Discovery had paid Denton House $60 million from 2015 to 2020 for design services, the filing said.

Now Arete Collective is waiting for final approval on the first phase of up to 350 residential units it plans to build on 65 acres on the North Shore it co-purchased with the Wasatch Group in a $43 million deal in April. Construction could start as soon as next month and clearing and grading of the first land parcel is already underway, the company said.

At the time of the sale, Arete’s press release described itself as a “development company known for sustainable development practices that prioritize climate resilience.”

But Arete has only one other project in its four-year history as a developer and its own public portfolio is based almost entirely on its former partnership with Discovery.

Buchan declined to be interviewed and said via email that her role at Discovery was limited to providing design services as director and president of Discovery Design, the company’s design branch. But her own Denton House profile highlights her former role as Discovery’s COO.

Other Arete staff also had influential roles at DLC, including Arete’s chief financial officer, Tom Hogan, who was formerly CFO at Discovery, and Arete’s chief strategy officer, Ryan Butters, who was formerly vice president of business strategy and analytics at Discovery.

Arete’s chief operating officer in Hawaii, Darren Flanagan, worked for Discovery for 12 years, including for two years as vice president of development at the Barbuda Bay Club, a project now the subject of a legal effort by the Global Legal Action Network over alleged environmental breaches.

Arete’s corporate environmental credentials are under scrutiny because the new units near Turtle Bay will be set back 150 to 350 feet from the shoreline and adjacent to a 660-acre conservation area the company will co-manage under conditions laid out in a 2015 agreement.

The Sierra Club and the North Shore Community Land Trust are monitoring the development for potential impact on habitat for endangered species, water quality and coastline erosion.

Local residents like Alan Poh from Defend Oahu Coalition is one of those concerned about the Arete executives’ track record on environmental and community issues.

“We have now found out that there is a mashup of interests between Arete and Discovery Land Company that shows a long history of blatant disregard for local populations, rules and environmental impacts,” Poh said.

Kahuku resident Jessica dos Santos is particularly worried that the developers are not as knowledgeable about the North Shore coastal dynamics as they should be. “This development represents the opposite of climate-conscious planning,” she said. “Anyone with a basic understanding of this coastline knows that the intensifying winter swells and the accelerating effects of sea-level rise will likely endanger these structures in the not-so-distant future.”

Ties To Discovery

Discovery officials did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls requesting comment.

Discovery Land Co. was founded in 1994 by Michael Meldman and has built its brand on high-end private communities and clubs, including the Kukio Golf and Beach Club on the Big Island, the 1,000-acre North Shore Preserve on Kauai and more than 30 others on the U.S. mainland and Europe.

Its website says it is a “humble steward of the land” that respects people, places and culture.

The homes in Discovery’s communities cost from $3 million to $50 million, according to Forbes magazine. While Discovery’s buyers have money, several of its projects have been criticized for their impact on vulnerable communities. 

Among those is the Barbuda Ocean Club on the Caribbean island of Barbuda, developed by Discovery in partnership with PLH Barbuda.

That resort development — begun soon after Hurricane Irma caused major damage in 2017 — poses risks to internationally designated coastal wetlands and has “serious human rights implications,” investigators from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights reported in 2022.

“On Palmetto Point, natural surroundings were altered by the removal of mangroves in certain areas and damaging habitats of protected flora and fauna, exacerbating the vulnerability of the island’s ecosystems to storms and natural disasters,” investigators found.

Legal efforts opposing the project have continued, including a lawsuit brought by the Global Legal Action Network challenging the construction of a runway in forest land near the resort by Discovery.

GLAN lawyer Sarah O’Malley said via email that the land that Discovery and PLH were developing “has been closed off to locals who rely on it for fishing, farming, hunting, and cultural activities. Mangroves have been ripped out, leaving Barbudans more vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather events.”

Buchan’s design company, Denton House, co-founded with her husband Joey and still in operation, started providing services directly to Discovery under an independent contractor agreement.

Discovery described the arrangement in court papers as a “close working relationship on scores of projects over many years.”

Buchan said by email that every Discovery Land Co. project “was managed and developed by independent partnerships and my work for the company was focused on design, marketing, and sales.”

Arete’s “principals were not involved with the Barbuda Ocean Club project,” she said, but the timeline of the project from 2017 to 2020 includes the period when Buchan was transitioning into a more influential role as Discovery’s COO.

By 2019, Buchan was “leading all aspects of community planning, design, development and startup operations” at Discovery, according to her online profile.

And Arete’s current Hawaii COO, Darren Flanagan, was vice president of development at the Barbuda Ocean Club resort from 2018 to 2020, according to his own Linkedin profile and social media posts marking his departure from the position on Barbuda.

Arete didn’t respond to a request to clarify Flanagan’s role in the Barbuda development, but Flanagan will be involved in Arete’s management of the two golf courses adjacent to the Turtle Bay resort.

By its own account, Denton House worked with Discovery on other projects over the course of their partnership that have resulted in environmental concerns.

The Chileno Beach Club in Los Cabos, Mexico, which Discovery began working on around 2009, was the subject of a complaint to the Mexican government from the international Commission for Environmental Cooperation over the alleged unauthorized alteration of water courses during construction by Discovery.

In that case the Mexican government found that no environmental damage had occurred.

At the Baker’s Bay Beach Club in the Bahamas, where Denton House designed structures including the resort clubhouse, runoff from the golf courses was the likely cause of damage to nearby reefs and fisheries, according to the Global Coral Reef Alliance.

In Big Sky, Montana, Discovery’s Yellowstone Club, which Denton House also designed the clubhouse for, is the subject of a Clean Water Act lawsuit brought by the Cottonwood Environmental Law Center alleging the resort is discharging treated sewage into the Gallatin River without a permit.

That case is still being litigated.

A Parting Of The Ways

Discovery Land Co. now has plans for a new master-planned community in South Maui and a private club development, including 700 private homes, a golf course and ski area near Steamboat Springs in Routt County, Colorado, similar to the Yellowstone Club.

But neither Denton House nor Arete Collective will be onboard, as their business relationship with Discovery imploded in early 2020, according to a lawsuit filed by Discovery’s lawyers against Buchan and others in U.S. District Court in Arizona in March 2021.

Initiated over a trademark dispute, the civil suit later escalated into other accusations, including misleading business practices, and ultimately led to the end of the partnership between Denton House and Discovery.

The case was settled out of court in May 2021.

But the filing indicates that at one point there had been plans for an even closer collaboration between them. Discovery’s lawyers said that in 2019, Buchan approached Meldman, the Discovery founder, with a proposal to “collaborate on certain development projects under a new business venture using DLC’s brand.”

Meldman was initially open to idea, the filing stated, but the relationship soured and by July 2020, Buchan had resigned as Discovery’s COO. Buchan wrote in an email that “while we considered collaborating with Discovery Land Company, we ultimately found that our philosophies were not aligned.”

By October 2020, Buchan had established Arete Collective as an end-to-end developer and staffed it with former Discovery executives.

In addition to Hogan and Butters, Buchan also hired Discovery’s chief marketing officer, Carol Taylor, its director of information technology, James Bailey, and a senior director, Emily Mayer. Hogan, Butter and Bailey had all been hired by Buchan for Discovery while she was COO there, Discovery said in its filing.

Thomas Ranch, a 2,200-acre mixed-use development in the Texas Hill Country 25 minutes from Austin, is the only other active Arete project, and its first under its own brand.

Plans for developing the area had been dormant since 2017, but after obtaining its permits, Arete is aiming to bring nearly 3,500 homes to what was a sleepy pocket for vacation homes near Lake Travis over the next decade.

“The project will generate multi-billions of dollars in real estate transactions within Burnet and Travis counties and thousands of temporary and permanent jobs,” Buchan told the Austin American-Statesman.

Work on infrastructure there began in the second half of 2023, and by January, county commissioners and residents were raising concerns over increased traffic congestion, the potential disruption of the breeding grounds for the endangered golden-cheeked warbler, and the impact on water supplies by the projected population growth, Community Impact reported.

Arete did not comment on the Thomas Ranch project for this story, but supplied a list of water and energy conservation measures that are being implemented during development.