545 Acres of Waiale Land to be Acquired by Maui Council
In a landmark move, The Maui News recently reported that Maui Council is set to vote on the acquisition of 545 acres of culturally-sensitive land on either side of Waiko Road in Central Maui. The majority of the land will be acquired from A&B for $10.5mm while roughly 50-acres is slated for dedication for cultural preservation. The transaction is widely supported by committee members and ancestral descendants given the presence of known Hawaiian burial remains in the area.
The news is significant, not just for A&B, who is parting ways with a massive amount of land previously planned for future residential and commercial development, but also for all future development in the area. Instead of a gradual urban sprawl from Maui Lani out towards Ma’alea, the transition will be much more abrupt. If development one day pushes in this direction, it now must find it ways through Waikapu Country Town, a large scale mixed-use development project, which runs along either side of Honoapi’ilani Highway, Mauka of the Wailea land donation and sale location. Waikapu Country Town has been in the works for decades with no end in sights to approvals.
As a new owner in Consolidated Baseyards, which sits right in the middle of the 545 acre land acquisition, the move by Maui Council locks Apeak Invest LLC and its partners into a very precious piece of light-industrial land. The half-acre lot, purchased in August 2021, is one of the last remaining undeveloped parcels of land in the area. Plans are underway to build a roughly 10,700 SF, multi-tenant warehouse.
Moving forward from this Waiale land transaction with the County, it’s now easy to surmise that very little commercial land will ever be entitled and built beyond the existing Consolidated Baseyards subdivision and the future Waiale commercial subdivision next door. The neighboring Waiale project continues to march towards an eventual sale of large commercial lots at some point in the next year or two. The cultural sensitivity in this area poses too large of a risk to any developing requiring grading or other land-disturbing activities, which is basically any form of development. With Central Maui out of the picture for new land development for the foreseeable future, A&B’s Maui Business Park lots near Kahului Airport should be a direct benefactor, along with Bill Mill’s Maui Lani project, which continues to slowly sell out at land prices in the $50 psf range.
Separate from the Waiale transaction, A&B also donated 23 acres of undeveloped land behind Target and Lowe’s in Kahului. The land will be utilized for residential housing development in an area fast becoming on of the more prime locations in Central Maui. Up until this donation, A&B had been pushing industrial land development out in this direction with Phase I and II of Maui Business Park. I had always anticipated Hansen Road would be the natural end point of the progress for industrial. Instead, badly needed housing will fill the final stretch.