On Wednesday, Honolulu lost its iconic former Mayor, Frank Fasi. Mayor Fasi will be remembered for a lot of things, but we here at inversecondemnation.com will fondly recall his cheek when it came to exactions and in lieu payments. Two of the more well known examples:
- During the second wave of investment in Hawaii from Japan, he announced that any golf course developer who wished to obtain permits from the City and County of Honolulu would have to pay a $100 million impact fee. We’re not sure whether anyone ever paid the fee, and we’re pretty sure that even in the days before Nollan and Dolan that a court would cast a skeptical eye towards it, but sometimes you just have to admire the pure audacity of something.
- In a case involving Queen’s Beach on Oahu’s east shore, the director of Mayor Fasi’s Department of Land Utilization testified that the City wanted to get “the goodies” from the developer of a proposed resort as a condition of allowing the development. By “the goodies,” he meant the most valuable portion of the beachfront parcel, the part along the beach, which would have to be dedicated to the public before any permits would issue. The developer challenged the exaction in federal court, but lost. This was pre-Nollan/Dolan. We represented the developer in its unsuccessful cert petition to the U.S. Supreme Court (we were ahead of our time!).
Those were the days, Mr. Mayor.