Kāneʻohe residents have spent tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees appealing a decision by Honolulu’s planning director to approve a plan for a 24-bed kūpuna care facility in the Mahinui neighborhood.

Developer Jacob Chan has spent tens of thousands of dollars defending the plan. He says the project will help meet the growing need for senior housing on Oʻahu and once completed, would enable his company Hawaiian Legacy Care to finance other residential projects, including more affordable homes for older adults.

The project ran into strong headwinds at a public hearing in December 2022 when neighbors on Kaimalu Place, an adjacent cul-de-sac, first raised concerns that the operation would create problems such as increases in traffic and noise, and additional stormwater runoff into the adjacent Kāneʻohe Bay.

Fast forward nearly three years and Chan still hasn’t begun building and the Kaimalu Place residents are pondering their legal options — including a possible court appeal.

While the two sides have little common ground, they are both dependent on the decisions of the Honolulu Zoning Board of Appeals, a five-person volunteer county board that meets on average once a month and has a backlog of 270 cases — 259 related to short-term rentals, according to the city.

The county zoning appeals board rarely makes the headlines, but its mission is to act as a check to the discretionary authority of the director of the Department of Planning and Permitting — currently Dawn Takeuchi Apuna. Board members are appointed by the mayor and approved by the City Council.

Based on available data, the board has rarely upheld an appeal in its recent history.

DPP was unable to provide updated numbers on the number of appeals that had been upheld in the last three years, but the board’s most recent report from 2022 showed none of the 41 appeals it considered in the five years between 2017 and 2021 were upheld.

Six ZBA decisions ended up in court, while 35 were denied, withdrawn or dismissed.

The board currently has two vacancies after the terms of Margaret Cannell and James Wataru expired in June.

‘Not A Close Call’

Chan was granted a conditional use permit in January 2023 to build a for-profit group living facility for older adults who can walk without assistance at 44-667 Kāneʻohe Bay Drive, on the corner of Kaimalu Place. He must still apply for a building permit before construction can begin.

The residents of 30 households along Kaimalu Place formed an opposition group Hui o Mahinui and appealed the decision to the zoning board. Their concerns are primarily the size and intensity of the project, the floor area ratio and the cumulative adverse impacts from hillside development.

In a submission to the board in March 2024, the group’s lawyer Michael Biechler argued that Takeuchi Apuna had erred in granting the original conditional use permit for Chan’s project, known as Hale Mahinui.

The conditional use permit “does not adequately mitigate the incompatibility of the multifamily dwelling with surrounding structures and uses,” the appeal reads.

That appeal has yet to be heard.

The residents also said the director later compounded the issue by using her discretion to approve a major redesign that expanded the footprint of the building from 12,000 to 19,000 square feet, while also reducing the number of parking and loading spots.

That design change was the subject of a separate appeal by the residents that has already been heard, and which the Zoning Board of Appeals did not sustain. 

DPP deputy counsel Brad Saito countered in a position statement to the board in March that the residents’ objections were based on erroneous interpretations of the county’s land use ordinance and don’t warrant serious consideration. 

Furthermore, Saito said the director had tried to minimize long-term impacts of the group living facility by imposing noise restrictions, prohibiting residents from keeping private vehicles and requiring a traffic management plan, although no environmental study was required by DPP.

“This is not a close call,” Saito said, “and even if it were, the ZBA would be required to defer to the Director regarding the appropriate interpretation of the Land Use Ordinance.”

The 25-foot, two-story structure would employ eight full-time staff and would include 24 single-occupancy rooms, a common kitchen, dining area, a salon and a nurses’ station.

Senior Housing Shortage

The development application for Hale Mahinui describes it as a “senior memory care facility” that would be operated by Hawaiian Legacy Care, which Chan set up in 2021.  

Oʻahu has a big need for more senior housing, Chan said in an interview Friday, “and there aren’t a lot of properties out there that are available to do something like this.”

Chan was raised in Kāneʻohe in a family of health care professionals. His mother and wife are nurses, and his father is an emergency medical technician. After working as an EMT himself, Chan became a loan officer, and both experiences led to his decision to develop senior housing, he said. 

Chan said he had considered a range of options from repurposing or retrofitting existing properties to smaller group living facility developments, but he settled on the Kāneʻohe Bay Drive site.

The island state is facing a looming challenge in a decade when 1-in-4 of the population, or around 220,000 people, will be over 65, according to a recent report by the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. 

Honolulu already has more than 100,000 people over the age of 65, according to the Census Bureau, a dire figure combined with an affordable housing crisis.

Hale Mahinui will be a for-profit residential complex, but Chan said it would enable his company to attract more funds and eventually move into creating more middle-tier senior housing — possibly in partnership with government entities or nonprofits.

“If I can get this first one completed, it would be my duty to try and fulfill as much of the need as possible,” he said.

Residents Warn Of Precedent

Opponents acknowledge the need for more senior housing but say the location is unsuitable for the intended use. The development site is not near any commercial or service centers, and is adjacent to a private canal that empties out into Kāneʻohe Bay. 

In addition to the size and use of the project, resident Sean O’Connor said, “there haven’t been adequate conditions put on the permit to ensure that it’s going to be used for what the developer said it’s going to be used for over the long term.”

O’Connor’s neighbor Rosie Goo said the county’s Land Use Ordinance permits eight units in a residential area, “but to be reasonable, we recognize it should be something more than eight units because he’s going to function as a commercial for-profit business.”

“Maybe 10, maybe 12 are going to work, but the relevant agencies within the city should be looking at that data and making the determination versus it appearing as if it’s like a foregone conclusion that the development will be approved,” Goo said.

Longer term, the residents say the approval of projects like Hale Mahinui opens up other neighborhoods to the prospect of commercial-scale businesses impinging on areas zoned residential. “When zoning exceptions are granted so loosely, infrastructure built for families is stretched beyond capacity, and both kūpuna and neighbors lose,” resident Jessica Smith said in an email.

Chan said he will follow all the required ordinances and will factor in all the concerns raised by the residents during the financing of the project and the approval of the final building permits. “I’m going to build a beautiful place for the residents and try to minimize the impact for our neighbors,” he said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Margaret Cannell was chair of the Zoning Board of Appeals. That is incorrect. The current chair is Ryan M. Toyomura.