Dole Food Co.’s 2.2-acre parcel at the end of Holoku Place in Wahiawa is squeezed between modest homes and the waters of Lake Wilson’s spillway, which snakes through the area. Although the land appears to be merely a buffer between the homes and the water, offering little apparent additional use, Dole has a potential buyer: the state of Hawaii.

The public Agribusiness Development Corp. on Thursday voted to issue a letter of intent and take a deeper look at buying the parcel from Dole, along with another 5.7-acre parcel nearby. 

The letter of intent is just a first step, Wendy Gady, the agency’s executive director, said after the meeting. But the approval to move forward is key to getting information needed to conduct due diligence, she said.

If the acquisitions go through, they’ll mark the latest in a long line of deals that define the symbiotic relationship between old pineapple companies and Hawaii taxpayers. 

Dole’s long-time former parent Castle & Cooke once played a dominant role in Hawaii’s politics and economy — particularly central Oahu and the former plantation town of Wahiawa — as one of the state’s Big Five corporations. With Hawaii’s pineapple economy now a distant memory, the companies have unused former plantation lands on their hands, and the agribusiness corporation has stepped in to buy more than 2,000 acres from the companies in recent years. 

Other state agencies have joined in the spending spree. In 2017, the Hawaii Technology Development Corp. agreed to pay Castle & Cooke $9.8 million for land where it hoped to develop a 150-acre campus for Oahu’s public safety workers.

The driving force behind much of the buying is Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz of Wahiawa, who plays a major role in steering money to the area as chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

Dela Cruz has been a proponent of the state buying unused land as part of his vision to rebuild Wahiawa’s agriculture economy by developing government-owned agriculture and food-processing facilities.

Among those projects is the one where Thursday’s Agribusiness Development Corp. meeting was held: a new $16 million Wahiawa Value-Added Product Development Center on the former site of an old warehouse. The agribusiness agency bought that land, too.

The Mystery Of Lot 17

But it’s not just agriculture development. Dela Cruz is viewed as the brains behind another proposed land deal with Castle & Cooke: one that makes a perennial appearance in the state budget, only to be axed by the governor. The land in question is known as Lot 17.

Earlier this month, Gov. Josh Green vetoed a proposal to pay Castle & Cooke $19 million for Lot 17, which consists of two parcels with a total assessed value of approximately $10.4 million. The idea was to use the land as a Department of Education base yard. 

Castle & Cooke has had the properties on the market for years, listed at $20 million, a spokeswoman said. The property is next to the site of Dela Cruz’s proposed first responders’ campus.

Dela Cruz acknowledged his attempt to steer $19 million for the property in a brief interview, saying, “We got it in the budget.”

Dela Cruz said it was the governor’s call whether to veto the expenditure, although he said the DOE needs the new base yard.

“The current facility yard is inadequate,” Dela Cruz said.

For his part, Green earlier this month said it doesn’t make sense to buy land for a base yard there now because the location of the first responder campus is still being worked out.

“We just haven’t reached final agreement on where the tech park should be, so it’s premature to buy the land,” he said.

In any case, it wasn’t the first time Dela Cruz pushed the state to buy Lot 17, said Mike McCartney, former Gov. David Ige’s one-time chief of staff who also served as Ige’s economic development director. Ige also blocked Dela Cruz’s quest for money for Lot 17, McCartney said.

“During my tenure as a member of the Ige administration I recall that the purchase of Lot 17 was something the WAM Chair vigorously pursued,” McCartney said. “However, it was not approved by us as is reflected in the Governor’s 2022 Budget Line Item Veto Message.”

Castle & Cooke’s chief executive, Harry Saunders, declined an interview request.

While the Lot 17 acquisition is dead for now, the Agribusiness Development Corp. has the chance to continue the state’s buying spree in central Oahu.

The parcel on Holoku Place is adjacent to a spillway that is part of an aging water system including a dam, spillway, irrigation ditches and a reservoir known as Lake Wilson. Green approved acquiring the system from Dole for $26 million in 2023.

Still, Gady stressed the corporation is only beginning to assess the land.

“We’re not both feet in,” she said.