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' 260 LAND AND POWER IN HAWAII 8 /Hawaii:Subdividing Lava Fields 261 Participation by local people in this subdividing boom was remarkable. The ramifications of speculative subdividing on the Big Island went be- Probably one Big Island family in four put money into a lot in one of these yond the county, affecting attitudes to development statewide. In fact this subdivisions.' sudden rush to subdivide on Hawaii generated part of the momentum for But even with such heavy participation,Big Islanders bought fewer than the statewide Land Use Law of 1961.Big Island subdivisions were springing 12%of the roughly 65,000 lots sold by 1975:4 This meant that the rest of the i up wherever developers could acquire large parcels cheaply.Usually this was buyers were outsiders—some 35% from Oahu, and most of the rest from far from established population and employment centers, and the parcels the US mainland. And this in turn meant that a nationwide phenomenon ! were not necessarily near each other. Puna alone was the size of the entire had made its way to the Big Island. island of Oahu.The projects were thus dotting remote,huge districts.The The post-World War II middle class of the United States in the national Land Use Law's preamble decried "scattered subdivisions with expensive, boom years of the late 1950s and 1960s had money to spend, and they also ? yet reduced,public services"—exactly what was appearing all over the south had increased leisure time. It was now within the financial reach of a great • and southeast parts of the Big Island. number of people to spend this time in vacation and retirement communities. Once the law was in place,the Land Use Commission it brought into being In the country's sunnier states developers stepped in to make possible a logi- I tried to close a crucial loophole allowing the creation of speculative and cal next move:actually investing in vacation and retirement real estate.By the i urban-type subdivisions on agricultural land. The LUC adopted a rule for- mid-1970s,one American family in 12 owned a piece of this sort of land.' bidding the subdivision of land in the agricultural district—where most of There were, to be sure, serious developers and serious buyers on the the speculative subdivisions were—into lots smaller than five acres, on the mainland.Over the boom years millions nationwide bought lots in planned a argument that even subdivided lots on agricultural land ought to be used for communities that evolved more or less as promised. bona fide farming,and most viable farms demanded at least five acres. But at the same time among both developers and buyers there were also But the state attorney general ruled the LUC out of bounds. He said speculators—meaning that millions bought into subdivisions which 25 and agricultural lot sizes were the jurisdiction of the counties.' Counties were 30 years later remained largely vacant and without even minimal site im- I thus allowed to continue setting minimum sizes in the agricultural district. provements. ( And Hawaii County was happy to allow lot sizes well under five acres,in fact Most Big Island subdivisions of the boom years in the Puna, Ka`u and all the way down to about one-sixth of one acre.(Not till 1969 was a uniform South Kona districts fell into the speculative category. statewide minimum set by the Legislature—one acre.)"'° The distinction between investment and speculation made no difference Evidence of Hawaii County's real attitude in the early boom years toward to most people on the Big Island, at least in the early years of the boom. controlling or restricting development in general could be seen in a Big Overall the lots appreciated in value,meaning that many Big Island families ! Island'Planning Commission move in 1962 on the eve of the effective date did well,at least in terms of paper gains.And Hawaii County did well too,at of the Land Use Law, when on a single day 42 new subdivisions involving least on the face of things.Right from the first boom year,the county's reve- 3,500 lots were approved, "in order to beat the [Land Use] law deadline," nues increased because these subdivisions came onto the tax rolls. according to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin." In the middle of that euphoric first twelve months, the Hilo Tribune- Beyond that,state legislators from the Big Island were active in attempts Herald editorialized: "This newspaper goes along with the optimists, con- to actually get rid of the Land Use Law, which had created a step in the fident that the eager buying of land,much of it sight unseen,means that the construction approval process that many in the business disliked. In 1963, Big Island is finally coming into its own,and that we are on the threshold of only two years after the law was adopted, a Senate bill for repeal was intro- development that has kept Oahu singing with prosperity .. . Here on the duced.Four of the nine introducers were Big Islanders.A second attempt at Big Island we don't much care what brings them in as long as they come and ! repeal followed the next year, when the Senate Lands Committee unani- as long as they buy. . ."6 mously reported out a bill that would have done away with the Land Use Law.The committee report called it a"barrier to economic development."12 * * * Three of the committee's eight members were from the Big Island,includ- Not everyone on the Big Island liked the new speculative subdivisions.As 1 ing the chairman,Kazuhisa Abe. early as 1960, Hawaii County Planning Director Hiroshi Kasamoto called In short,on the Big Island there was both political muscle and substan- the existing subdivision ordinance"a bad law."He wanted to"control devel- tial public backing in favor of large-scale, virtually unrestricted develop- opment and stop speculation."7 County Attorney Yoshito Tanaka in the ment,and this continued to be so for several years. same year described the situation simply as"a mess."' * * *