After five years of battling a developer’s plan to build luxury homes on an overgrown golf course that sits atop the decomposed remains of hundreds of cattle killed during a series of anthrax outbreaks more than a century ago, community activists have won their effort to protect the area as open space.

Fifth Circuit Judge Kathleen Watanabe ruled on Monday in favor of Lorraine Mull and Fran White, the plaintiffs in the legal challenge whose multimillion-dollar homes overlook the proposed development site. They argued that developing the golf course could release potentially life-threatening anthrax spores into the community.

The development plan would also go against Princeville’s original incorporation papers, which envisioned a neighborhood centered around open space, according to the court’s judgement.

“Once Starwood begins digging,” the judgement reads, “the harm will be irreparable.”

At the heart of the dispute is a decades-old golf course dedication document that protects the Princeville Makai Golf Club’s defunct Woods Golf Course from development until Feb. 28, 2026. Starwood Capital Group, the Miami-based developer that bought the golf course and a nearby hotel in 2018, had timed its plan to build dozens of luxury homes and condos on the golf course to sync with the expiration of the 55-year nondevelopment provision. 

But the judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, who argued that the golf course dedication must be read in conjunction with the Princeville community’s covenants, conditions and restrictions, a document commonly known as CC&Rs, which modify the dedication in this important way: Upon expiration of the nondevelopment provision, an automatic five-year extension kicks in. The provision renews in perpetuity in five-year increments unless 75% of the owners vote otherwise, the judge said.

“This is not a NIMBY issue — not even close,” White, one of the plaintiffs, said. “Open space was always part of the Princeville master plan and it’s important as a community to be able to protect the original master plan, and that’s where the judge came down on this.”

The developer had argued in court that a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would have “a profound chilling effect” on title insurers’ willingness to do business in Hawaiʻi because there is no recorded document that would have clarified that the nondevelopment clause was essentially perpetual despite its stated end date.

Gregory Kugle, the Honolulu attorney who heads the Starwood defense team, did not respond to a request for comment.

Kauaʻi County Planning Director Kaʻāina Hull said he had closely monitored the case as a way to gauge the legal authority of homeowners associations to enforce land use policy agreements. Whether CC&Rs can stand up to, or be undone by, legal challenges is of interest to county planners, Hull said, as they explore the idea of using homeowners associations as a vehicle to enforce climate change mitigation strategies, such as banning highly flammable vegetation from residential landscaping.

The anthrax issue was added to the lawsuit in 2023. Initially, the litigation, filed in 2020, sought to halt plans to transform the golf course into a luxury camping resort and, later, to halt a new plan to construct luxury homes.

Starwood, with at least $115 billion in assets, is a global investment company with interests in real estate and hospitality. It owns Princeville’s 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay, where the cheapest rooms can cost upward of $1,200 per night, and the Princeville Makai Golf Club.

Read the judge’s ruling: