Forming the common ground of all their pleadings is the need to provide better housing for plantation workers. The land mauka of the Belt Highway would be subdivided into multi-acre lots, which would be exchanged with independent cane growers in the Hamakua area who would otherwise be selling their cane lands to developers. The LUC reclassified 65 acres of the makai land. However, it expressly denied the sugar company's proposal to exchange urbanized multi-acre lots for lands owned by independent cane growers, stating that such an exchange is not a basis for reclassification to an Urban designation. In the July 1980 letter to the LUC, EM Bush, land administrator for Davies, went on to say that the company continues to work with the County of Hawai'i in developing acceptable plans for employee houselots in the remainder of the reclassified parcel.
County records do nor bear out that claim.
The first proposal to subdivide most of the remaining acreage upzoned in Docket 74-I was not made to the Planning Department until July of 1991. Making the application was Pheasant Ridge Corporation, an entity beaded by developer Sheldon Zane. In 1975, Honoka'a Sugar Company again went before the state Land Use Commission with a request to have the LUC place into the urban district about 50 acres of the land whose urbanization the LUC had rejected the previous year. As before, Honoka'a Sugar proposed using some of the land available for trade to independent growers wanting to get out of the business. The LUC granted the requested upzoning in what was known as Docket No.