Maui committee agrees to defer vote on Lahaina land purchase tied to roadway extensions and HECO substation relocation

The Maui County Council Water and Infrastructure Committee discussed Resolution 25-129 on June 30, 2025, which would authorize the county to pursue acquisition of about 1.72 acres in Lahaina across multiple tax map keys for use in the Kahua Street and Dickinson Street roadway extension projects. Director Jordan Molina of the Department of Public Works told the committee the purchase would also support Mill Street widening and an opportunity to relocate a HECO substation that conflicts with the Kahua alignment.

The matter matters to Lahaina residents and to county recovery plans because the projects are intended to improve roadway connectivity and evacuation routes as part of long-term recovery efforts following the 2023 fires. Director Jordan Molina said the county is “scrambling to go as fast as we can” to avoid conflicts with property rebuilds and to give Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) the clarity it needs to advance its design work.

Committee members pressed staff about the price and appraisal. Committee Vice Chair Yukulei Sugimura asked whether appraisals were lower than the asking price; Director Molina confirmed there was a discrepancy and said negotiations are ongoing but the administration was asking authority to negotiate up to the owner’s asking price of $1,950,000. Molina told the committee the county is comfortable continuing negotiations despite the appraisal gap because of the public benefits the parcels offer.

Council member Gabe Johnson asked for a location reference; Molina described the Dickinson segment as roughly at the corner near the Aloha gas station and said the planned roadway would function as a collector connecting H?onopi'ilani Highway to the Lahaina Bypass. On utilities, Molina said both distribution and transmission lines cross the area; the county typically does not bury transmission lines, but distribution lines are commonly undergrounded if funding is available.

Members discussed funding sources for any undergrounding. Molina said the projects are primarily county-funded through capital improvement program (CIP) allocations (identified as 2025 CIP under the Office of Recovery) and that the county is pursuing supplemental federal funding through Federal Highway programs and potential Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds. He also said HECO may have access to programs to support undergrounding.

The committee heard that zoning and parcel configuration will affect future uses. Some candidate parcels are zoned M-2 (industrial) and agricultural; HECO’s site needs were described as roughly 36,000 square feet. Molina said the county expects to pursue land exchanges with multiple owners in the area and to seek “value for value” proposals; any subdivision or zoning changes needed to facilitate exchanges would come back to the council for authorization.

Committee members asked about community outreach. Molina said staff and administration have contacted property owners in the neighborhood to gauge interest and identify options that minimize displacement of homeowners already rebuilding. Members suggested potential county uses for leftover acreage, including bus facilities, a recycling/ redemption center, or agricultural/community garden space, and Molina said those possibilities are being considered as part of negotiation strategy.

The chair proposed and the committee agreed without objection to defer the item to the full Maui County Council meeting on July 8, 2025, to allow further work on the proposed CD1 version of the resolution, clarify acreage, and continue negotiations with property owners and HECO. No formal vote on purchase authority occurred at the committee level on June 30.

The committee took two rounds of three-minute questions from members before agreeing to the deferral. Staff noted that written testimony would remain part of the official record and that a revised resolution (CD1) correcting the total acreage and making non-substantive edits had been posted as a Granicus item.

Outlook: The acquisition, if authorized by the full council, would be an early step toward constructing collector connections and relieving chokepoints in Lahaina’s road network. It would also be a prerequisite to HECO’s relocation work for the substation and could require further council action on land exchanges, subdivisions or zoning changes depending on final site footprints.