THE ZONING PROCESS

First of all, what is zoning? 

The State and the County divides land into different "zoning" districts that tells property owners what they can and cannot do with their property. Zoning is established by laws, no different than being able to vote at age 18 or establishing speed limits. In Maui’s case, all of the different zoning districts fall under Title 19 of the Maui County Code. The State has four basic districts, those are found in Hawaii Revised Statutes under Chapter 205. 

The zoning on each property tells an owner both how they can or cannot use their property. It says how small a lot can be, the height of any buildings, sometimes the size, how many buildings can be built, and to a certain degree, where they can be built.   

Most importantly, it controls the “use” of a property. For instance, agriculturally-zoned land lets someone raise cattle, grow crops, and have certain food-processing facilities. It also lets an owner build one “farm dwelling” and an ohana. But they can’t have a businesses like a hotel or car dealership. Those things need a different kind of zoning, either hotel or commercial.

Hanzawa's Current Zoning

In Hanzawa’s case, the store was there long before there were any zoning laws at all! The store is considered a “grandfathered” or “non-conforming” use. It was only later that it got zoned “Interim” (a legitimate zoning district in our codes) and put in the State Agricultural District.

Why is it in the Agricultural District? The State adopted basic districts in the early 1960’s, Urban, Agriculture, Rural, and Conservation. For whatever reason, the store was put in the “Ag District” where stores are not allowed.

How did the store get zoned “Interim?” The County Board of Supervisors blanket-zoned most of the County to Interim in the late 1950’s; only a few places received other zoning. Interim covered all of Haiku, Paia, Hana, the North and South shores, most of Kula, most of the central valley, and almost all of Molokai and Lanai. That’s a lot! Our store was one of those properties that got zoned this way.

As the name implies, Interim was supposed to be temporary, but the Board of Supervisors never got around to re-zoning, most of it wasn’t changed until the 1990’s (see below). Being temporary, it allows a whole lot of different uses, including one house per 6,000 square feet, schools, parks, government buildings, churches, hospitals, and more.

The problem with Interim and Agriculture is that it does not allow stores. Being non-conforming, the use will disappear if there is ever another fire or some natural disaster. Maui’s code allows grandfathered uses to build again, but it must do that within a year of stopping. Right now with the County it sometimes takes almost that long to get a building permit, let alone rebuild.

Getting Rid of Interim

The County only got around to rezoning most (not all) of Interim-zoned land through several County-wide changes 1990’s. Before that, the only properties that got out of Interim zoning was where owners individually had to applied for it – what we are doing now.

One of the changes was a big process where the County wanted to get rid of Interim zoning and rezoned most of the homes, businesses, parks, churches, schools and other things on Maui according to the community plans. While part of the reason was to get rid of Interim, another reason was to preserve the County’s “mom and pop” stores as part of our heritage. Dozens of old stores in Keokea to Makawao, Paia, and Haiku were simply given commercial zoning.

But that project was only for the State Urban District, and Hanzawa’s was left out because it is State Agriculture District.

The other changes took place when the County adopted Agricultural and Rural zoning ordinances, and then re-zoned huge amounts of land according to the Community Plans and the matching State Districts.

The store, unfortunately, was left out of both of these processes and must go through the long and expensive rezoning process.   

Rezoning Hanzawa Store –the long process.

Rezoning is a long County process because zoning can only be changed by an ordinance or law. We have applied for four things just like it shows on the community plan – to change the State Districts from Agriculture to Urban and from Agriculture to Rural, and the County Zoning from Interim to “Business Country Town” and from Interim to Conditional Rural.

The whole process takes well over a year after applying. It is also very expensive and we have hired an architect, engineer, traffic engineer, archaeologist, and a planner to pull together all of the necessary studies that make up these applications. 

Once the application was filed with the Maui Planning Department, they looked at it, made sure all the information was there, and sent it to over a dozen government agencies for them to review it and submit comments.

After all of the comments are in and the questions answered, a public hearing is scheduled with the Maui Planning Commission. All of the neighbors in 500 feet of the property, as well as anyone asking in writing to be formally notified, were sent a certified letter telling them of the hearing.

At the hearing in front of the Planning Commission, the applicants (that’s us) will present their application and answer questions. The Commission will also invite the public to testify. That testimony can be in support, raise concerns, or be whatever the testifier wants to say. The Commission will close the hearing, ask more questions, and then vote on the applications. The Commission only makes a recommendation to the County Council.

The Commission's recommendation is then transmitted to the County Council, where it will first go to the Land-Use Committee. That committee will also take testimony, vote, and send it to the full Council. Ultimately, the County Council will adopt an ordinance that changes our zoning.that changes our zoning.

You should know that the application is a public document, and once submitted to the Planning Department, you can review it and whatever is in the file, and make copies (they will charge 25¢ per page).