Hilton Waikoloa Village’s neighbors are protesting a plan that would convert 601 Ocean Tower hotel rooms to 450 timeshare units.
Hilton Waikoloa Village’s neighbors are protesting a plan that would convert 601 Ocean Tower hotel rooms to 450 timeshare units.
Members of the Association of Apartment Owners of Halii Kai, a condominium complex adjacent to the hotel, have appealed Planning Director Duane Kanuha’s decision granting the hotel’s planned unit development request. Their concerns, attorney Roy Vitousek said Wednesday, include questions about the lack of an updated special management area permit for the new construction — of a road, port cochere and parking spaces — and the impact on their properties.
Vitousek said hotel owners Global Resort Partners believe the 1985 SMA permit granted for the tower’s construction covers the new work. Kanuha agreed.
“While such practice is not specifically prohibited by the County Code or applicable Planning Rules, it raises serious questions about the ability of a PUD applicant to circumvent County requirements and procedures by relying on determinations that were made — decades earlier — based on different information and using different standards of review,” Vitousek wrote in the appeal.
The planning director can grant a PUD without a public hearing and without notifying residents more than 1,000 feet away from the subject property, something several bills the County Council postponed last year attempted to address.
Vitousek argued that Kanuha’s approval of construction within the special management area without an updated permit violates state law.
A message left with Global Resort Partners’ Virginia office was not returned as of press time Wednesday. Messages left for Kanuha and Deputy Planning Director Bobby Command were also not returned Wednesday.
The appeal was scheduled to go before the county’s Board of Appeals, but at Vitousek’s request, has been postponed to the board’s April 10 meeting.
Kanuha granted the PUD application in December, after receiving 70 letters opposing the project. A planned unit development allows a land owner to receive variances from county codes. In this case, Global Resort Partners asked to construct a 650-foot driveway ending in a cul-de-sac, which is 50 feet longer than county code permits such roads to be. They also sought to build fewer parking spaces than the code required, and variances for building height and loading space.
Global Resort Partners, which owns the hotel, filed the PUD request in June. Around the same time, company representatives made a presentation to Halii Kai owners explaining some of the plans, but without providing a copy of the application.
The company argued the switch from hotel rooms to timeshare units will not create a substantive change in the number of employees within the tower, and deliveries and other services would continue to be routed through the Hilton’s service entrance and tunnels. Timeshare use of the tower also will not create additional demand for local catering, hotel events or other parking demand generators, the application said.
Construction is proposed in three phases and would take about three years to complete.