Congratulations are due to the Surfrider Foundation, Hawaii’s Thousand Friends, Ka Iwi Coalition, and Kahea: The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance, for their successful appeal of the zoning variance that would have allowed a new hotel wing to replace the existing Diamond Head wing of the Moana Surfrider Hotel with a new 26-story tower on the beach in Waikiki. The new building, which had been granted a variance from various zoning requirements, would have created a 74% encroachment on the coastal height setback.
You can read the court’s decision here. It’s well worth at least skimming through.
The variance had been granted by the city’s planning director. The director’s decision was then upheld by the Zoning Appeals Board, and also upheld by the Circuit Court.
But the plaintiffs persisted.
I wrote about the case last year in a Civil Beat column after the Supreme Couirt agreed to hear the case, (“Hawaii Monitor: Shifting the Sands to Evade Waikiki’s Zoning Limits“).
If you don’t subscribe to Civil Beat, you can read that column here.
The court’s unanimous decision, released this week, rejected pretty much all of the city’s rulings on the variance, finding that none of the three criteria had been met.
The question becomes this: How did the city, with multiple levels of review, get it so wrong? And how is it that the review by the Circuit Court also gave the city and the hotel a pass?
Is there an explanation that doesn’t involve some kind of straight-out political manipulation of the process?
The Supreme Court’s ruling doesn’t offer any hints at where the whole process came off the tracks, and it is not at all likely that the city itself will take a closer look to determine what went wrong and how to correct it in the future.
I would welcome suggestions from those of you with experience inside the beast as to how this process went so wrong.
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Oahu is still reeling from the Mayor Mufi Hannemann Administration. There is no secret. Follow the money.
My understanding was that that wing should never have been built at all. And I think that it is far from being the only high rise that either was allowed in spite of ordinances or was built in excess of permits.
To answer your questions:
1) $$$$.
2) More $$$$.
3) No.
But as bad as the city’s review process is, I would still put forward the idea that HCDA is an even bigger joke when it comes to looking out for the best interests of the public.
Variances are all over the place. Fought current Windward Passage in Kailua years ago……10 story limit. Two 10 story buildings were planned and the developer got a variance and built one 18 story instead.
The laws were written poorly under unforeseen circumstances. Investments were made in good faith. Good people disagree.
Stare decisis is the religious faith of our courts, but the decisions seem to move to extremes at times like a pendulum . The adversarial US justice system is surely the worst in the world, except as they say for all the rest.
The Circuit Courts don’t appear to know or care to become informed when dealing with environmental law. This is similar to government agencies not understanding the intent of rules, regulations, ordinances under their purview. It appears to be easier to issue a variance then to deal with it.