Questions raised by a 2006 consultants report on archaeological issues in the area of the proposed expansion of the Turtle Bay Resort, including the probability of finding additional Native Hawaiian remains, appear to pose the latest major hurdle the resort’s owners will have to clear in order to proceed with long-delayed development plans.

The questions come as the resort's owner, Oaktree Capital Management, LLC, faces an October 31 deadline to find a buyer or turn the 860-acre property back to its primary lenders after defaulting on $400 in loans. But it already faces several legal, administrative, and political challenges to its development plan. Concerns over possible burials simply lengthens its already long list of woes.

In August 2006, a draft “Archaeological Mitigation Plan” was submitted to the State Historic Preservation Division but quickly withdrawn after its findings caught the attention of state officials and prompted a call for changes to the existing plans, including an extended shoreline setback to avoid probably burial sites. The 122-page report was not available to the public until recently, when the Defend Oahu Coalition obtained a copy using the state’s open records law.

Mark Cunningham, co-chair of the coalition, which opposes further development at Turtle Bay, said copies of the report were delivered to several members of Governor Lingle’s Working Group on Turtle Bay, including its chairman, Bill Paty. The Working Group began discussing the report and the issue of sensitive archaeological sites earlier this month.

Working Group member and longtime Punaluu community activist Kathy Mattoon said the report is significant because it makes the area’s archaeological and cultural significance clear to the public and to any prospective buyers hoping to pursue the resort’s 20-year old development plan.

“Whoever is thinking of investing in Turtle Bay needs to know what they are going to get into regarding historic sites and iwi (human remains),” Mattoon told Honolulu Weekly last month. “They are going to have the Hawaiian community opposed to them.”

The report was prepared for Turtle Bay Resort by Cultural Surveys Hawaii, Inc. and archaeologists Constance O’Hare and Hallett Hammatt to provide updated recommendations for identification and protection of burial sites and other culturally sensitive areas. The consultants reviewed all prior research and reports, including many prepared after the resort’s expansion plans were originally developed.

The report found that although some areas have been studied extensively, “little to no work” has been done in two of the proposed hotel sites, and major parts of two other hotel sites were not tested despite the discovery of burials during earlier clearing.

“We recommend additional testing in seven development parcels” to identify cultural deposits, O’Hare and Hammatt wrote. “If cultural deposits or burials are found, then other excavation methods will be employed, such as trenching or hand excavation of units.”

In addition, the report recommended that “any disturbance...even surface grubbing, should be monitored by an archaeologist,” including “even minor ground disturbance, such as the development of a shoreline parkway along the coast.”

Instead of following the updated but inconvenient recommendations of their own consultants, Turtle Bay representatives have insisted that the results of an earlier archaeological survey already accepted by the state are sufficient and that any additional cultural sites discovered during development can be addressed on an “as needed” basis.

Construction delays and other problems resulting from burials unearthed at the site of the Walmart store on Keeaumoku and the Whole Foods store in Kakaako illustrate the costly problems posed by the discovery of iwi.

The Turtle Bay Resort covers approximately 860-acres stretching from Kawela Bay to Kahuku Point, and expansion plans includes five proposed hotels, a thousand resort condominium units in five areas, two golf courses, a shopping village, beach club, and equestrian center.

Nineteen human burials have previously been found in several different places within the resort area, along with Hawaiian artifacts such as fishing gear and other materials. Radiocarbon dating estimates some of the finds may date as early as the 11th century, although a few appear to be modern-era burials, the report found.

In an October 2006 letter to Cultural Surveys of Hawaii, then-state historic preservation administrator Melanie Chinen advised that state laws and administrative rules have developed quite a bit since the expansion plan was originally proposed and approved in the 1980s.

Chinen wrote that, based on the 2006 report, “there is a high probability that one or more of the proposed hotels is located in an area within which numerous (as yet undiscovered) subsurface burials are located.” In another reference, Chinen said results show, “beyond a reasonable doubt” that one or more large concentrations of burials are likely to be found in the areas of the proposed hotels.

“We recommend that the Master Plan be revisited and revised, including the consideration and proposal of alternative design schemes, in order to avoid all or most of the burial areas, in particular,” including a 150-200 meter shoreline setback, Chinen wrote.

It is not clear whether, or how, the newly disclosed report could impact deliberations of the Land Use Commission, which is considering a challenge to its 1988 reclassification of 236 acres at Turtle Bay from agriculture to urban use, or the city’s pending decision on whether to issue subdivision permits that would allow selling of the resort’s property piece by piece.

Many observers believe each new problem in the path of the Turtle Bay expansion increases the chances that Gov. Lingle’s plan to acquire the property and protect it from development will succeed.

“Some of us hope other potential buyers will decide it’s more trouble than it’s worth,” Mattoon said.

-Ian Lind
July 2006