Mahalo for supporting Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Enjoy this free story!

Owners of Turtle Bay Resort won preliminary approval from a Honolulu City Council committee Thursday for a permit critical to completion of a $116 million renovation of the aging North Shore complex. Read more

Owners of Turtle Bay Resort won preliminary approval from a Honolulu City Council committee Thursday for a permit critical to completion of a $116 million renovation of the aging North Shore complex.

The major special management area use permit sought through Resolution 20-97 would allow Turtle Bay to redesign and relocate the porte cochere of its main building; extend a reflecting pool and add a garden; construct a new pool; install trellises at walkways to the resort’s beach cottages and add a new pool behind the cottages; expand its golf cart barn; modify the rock wall entrance into the resort; demolish a guard shack; and replace the chain-link fence along Kamehameha Highway from Kawela Bay to Kahuku Point with a wood fence and/or landscaped hedges.

The improvements will cost about $26 million and are part of a larger $116 million project that’s underway.

“We believe that by upgrading our facilities the visitor experience will be enhanced,” said Jerry Gibson, Turtle Bay vice ­president. “We need to continuously reinvest in our product which we provide to our visitors.”

For roughly 45 years, improvements at the resort consisted of “lipstick and rouge rather than really changing the property,” Gibson said.

“The Turtle Bay hotel definitely needs a face-lift and this project would accomplish that,” said Councilman Ron Menor, chairman of the Council Zoning, Planning and Housing Committee. “More importantly, the city needs to support construction projects that can help to revitalize the economy given the severe and devastating economic downturn that our island and our state are currently experiencing.”

Menor said that need for more construction activity, as well as Turtle Bay’s intention to start the work soon after it obtains approvals, led him to place the matter on Thursday’s agenda.

While Turtle Bay expansion plans in the past have met with community opposition, no objections were raised Thursday or in written testimony. There was, however, ample written testimony in support from union representatives, key North Shore businesses, groups and individuals, including several of Turtle Bay’s 600 employees.

Thursday’s approval by the Zoning, Planning and Housing Committee sets the measure up for a final vote of the full Council, likely at its May 6 meeting. If approval is granted then, Gibson said he expects most of the major improvements will begin by the end of summer.

The resort currently has 410 hotel rooms and suites in its main hotel and 42 beach cottages.

Gibson was asked by Councilman Brandon Elefante about the resort’s full expansion plans.

“Early on in the project we were talking about a lot of different things, but we decided to concentrate on this and make this so the community would be proud and look at this as the shining star,” Gibson said. “So we really haven’t done a lot of work on other phases or other things. I expect that at some point in the future, maybe after all this is done, we’ll start to take a look at it again, but for right now … our sole concentration, and our owners’ sole concentration, is on this.”

A 2015 conservation agreement with the state, the Army and the Trust for Public Lands allowed for up to two full-service hotels with a total of 625 rooms and up to 100 resort residential units in exchange, in part, for keeping 665 acres from Kawela Bay to Kahuku Point designated as conservation.

In 1986, Turtle Bay’s former owners won approval to build 3,500 additional units, including five new hotel sites. But those plans were halted due to community opposition.

Also on Thursday, the committee gave preliminary approval to a measure that would direct the city’s planning director to process a bill to allow for an increase in how much money can be spent on improvements or renovations for a nonconforming structure.

Currently, work on a nonconforming structure cannot cost more than 10% of replacing the entire structure during a one-year period. Resolution 20-56, introduced by Council Chairman Ikaika Anderson, would increase the allowable limit to 50% of the replacement cost.

Under the current law, for example, if the cost to replace a nonconforming auto repair shop operating in a residential-zoned neighborhood is $1 million, then $100,000 in improvements would be allowed. The change would allow up to $500,000 of work.

Kathy Sokugawa, the city’s acting planning director, said the current threshold of 10% is designed to discourage the perpetuation of nonconforming uses. Allowing up to 50% would be “a bit concerning,” she said.

Supporting testimony for the measure came from construction trade unions who argued the change would stimulate more construction and allow improvements to properties to keep them from becoming blighted.