Developer Mike Atherton said he was a “young man” of 55 when he first started dreaming up Waikapū Country Town, a sprawling housing development in Maui’s central valley.

“They said, ‘Atherton, you’ll never get this project approved.’ Everybody told me that,” recalled Atherton, now 77. “I said, ‘oh yeah, you just sit back and watch.’ … Took awhile, but here we go.”

After more than two decades, Atherton’s Waikapū Properties LLC is preparing to break ground on the 1,433-unit housing project that will also include a new public school after obtaining the needed permits to start. He told the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative on Wednesday he expects construction to be underway “more or less in 60 days.” 

“We’re going to build this little town,” Atherton said.

The expected groundbreaking comes just as Maui County is moving forward with plans to build a much-needed wastewater treatment plant in Central Maui. It will serve the growing needs in the island’s population center, including Waikapū Country Town. 

The development will include 500 workforce housing units; 933 market-rate units; 200,000 square feet of retail space; 910 acres of agricultural preserve land; and a new elementary and middle school with capacity for 1,650 students at full buildout.

Atherton started planning the development in 2004, after purchasing 2,000 acres in Waikapū that included the Maui Tropical Plantation. After years of working through state and county review, where the project received widespread support from both officials and community members, the project got approval from the Maui County Council in 2019. However, Atherton said it has taken several more years after the project received the green light to get approval for the permits needed to start construction. 

Delays were due in part to the initial expectation that Waikapū Country Town would have to develop a new wastewater treatment plant to service the project. Three months after getting approval, Waikapū Properties LLC applied for a special permit to build the facility. But the permit was put on hold because the county was planning to develop a facility of its own. 

In 2022, then-Maui County Mayor Mike Victorino and Waikapū Properties struck a public-private partnership agreement allowing the project to hook up to the county’s existing wastewater treatment system in Kahului and removing Waikapū Properties’ required monetary contributions toward a new wastewater plant. 

The goal was to prevent the development of the wastewater plant from slowing down the project. As part of the agreement, Waikapū Country Town increased the number of planned workforce housing units by 213.

The new Central Maui wastewater facility is now expected to cost more than double what officials initially thought when planning the project in 2022. At the time, the conceptual cost was $130.6 million. In April, Maui County Department of Environmental Management Director Shayna Agawa said the project would cost $298 million to $420 million. Agawa said the previous estimate didn’t take into account technical information and was prepared before the August 2023 wildfires.

Project documents presented to the Maui Planning Commission earlier this week put the estimate at $342.8 million. 

On Tuesday, the Planning Commission voted 6-0 to recommend land use changes for 15 acres in Waikapū that would allow the wastewater treatment plant to be built, with some caveats. Commissioners wanted to make sure that the extra capacity that the current Kahului plant would gain by diverting wastewater to the new Central Maui plant would prioritize existing wastewater needs, including cesspools, before allowing for new needs. The Maui County Council will have the final say on the land use changes.

The new wastewater plant will have capacity of 4 million gallons per day, with 48% going toward new anticipated development, 45% for existing development that will be diverted from the current Wailuku-Kahului wastewater reclamation facility and 7% for future additional capacity, according to a presentation on the project. Recycled water from the facility will also go toward agricultural uses in Waikapū.

According to the project’s final environmental impact statement published in February, it’s expected to be operational in 2029. 

Concerns over how long the wastewater plant will take to build also prompted the council to propose a bill that would allow the county to provide temporary wastewater service to the new Central Maui elementary and middle school if it opens before the new plant is completed. The bill passed out of committee by a 9-0 vote in October and passed first reading at the full council on Friday.

The Central Maui school project, which will include 12 acres for the elementary and 14 acres for the middle school, plans to open its first phase in 2031 with capacity for 600 students in grades 6-8. It was set to be the first project overseen by the Hawai‘i School Facilities Authority created by the State Legislature to specifically build new schools. 

However, the agency is first working to advance the new campus for King Kamehameha III Elementary School, which was burned in the fire and has since been relocated to a temporary site in Kapalua. 

Because Waikapū Country Town will be able to hook up to existing county wastewater services, Atherton said it can still move forward while the Central Maui wastewater plant is in the works. He said infrastructure such as water lines will be built on the site first, followed by the affordable housing, and then the elementary school. He estimated the first affordable homes would be ready in two years.

“We’re ready to go,” Atherton said. “We finally made it through the labyrinth of Maui County.”

The project has had to apply for a litany of permits and finalize other plans and agreements. That included changes to the Waikapū Country Town District that would allow educational uses in the residential area and had to be approved by the Maui County Council in 2023; an archaeological preservation plan submitted to the State Historic Preservation Division and approved in 2024; construction plans for Phase 1 of development submitted to the county in 2025; and a purchase agreement with the Hawai‘i School Facilities Authority for the land where the school will be built, according to the project’s annual status report for 2025, the latest year available.  

But now Atherton’s dream is moving closer to becoming a reality.

“Nobody ever thought I’d make it,” he said.