The state plans to spend $8 million to widen busy Kamehameha Highway and install turn lanes outside Turtle Bay Resort, raising questions about whether the project is a taxpayer-funded benefit for the resort or a needed safety improvement.

"These improvements should have been done decades ago. And they should have been paid for by the resort, not the taxpayers," said Mark Cunningham, a Kawela Bay resident.

"My condolences go out to every family that's had a loss at that intersection. And they have been happening since they first broke ground there at the resort."

Company officials, however, say the improvements are unrelated to a massive development that's planned at the resort, which could add 3,500 rooms and condominium units. They say it's the state's responsibility to put in safety improvements.

State Department of Transportation officials said the work will create a left-turn lane for Kahuku-bound traffic pulling into the resort as well as deceleration and acceleration lanes for Hale'iwa-bound drivers entering and leaving the resort.

"When we started this project, it was meant to improve safety," DOT spokesman Scott Ishikawa said. "It was not meant to help develop Turtle Bay."

However, Ishikawa said, the DOT is reviewing whether a 1986 unilateral agreement allowing Turtle Bay to expand to up to 4,000 rooms also would require the developer to pay for the highway work.

"I don't think anyone questions the good intentions of the project," said Ishikawa, who said the department's legal team is reviewing the agreement. "The issue brought up is who's going to foot the bill."

Ishikawa said the department first heard about the unilateral agreement shortly before a Feb. 16 Kahuku Community Association meeting at which DOT representatives, including Ishikawa, gave an update on the widening project.

Carol Philips, a member of the North Shore Neighborhood Board, said the reason the DOT is doing the work is because people have been killed and seriously injured on the roadway.

One of the worst accidents at the Kuilima Drive entrance happened in February 1997. A van with eight Kahuku High and Intermediate School students driving toward Hale'iwa on a school holiday slammed into a car pulling onto Kuilima Drive, killing the 16-year old van driver, throwing five of his classmates to the pavement and critically injuring a 12-year old boy and an 82-year-old woman.

"I think that due to the loss of life of those turning in and out of the resort, most everyone thinks the project should move forward regardless of if it's paid for by tax dollars or the resort," she said.

"However, it does say in the unilateral agreement that the resort has to pay for turn lanes into the resort at Kuilima Drive, and that's a fact. It doesn't say when, it just says they'll pay."

Kuilima Resort Co. developers, who want to use a 2-decade-old unilateral agreement to build five additional hotels plus condominium units at the resort, say the DOT safety improvements don't apply to the development modifications spelled out in the agreement.

Keith Kurahashi, president of Kusao & Kurahashi Inc., planning and zoning consultant for Kuilima Resort, said the agreement requires the developer to put in amenities — including road improvements — once certain conditions are met. The state project is separate from that, he said.

"The trigger would be hotel development to the extent that the intersection warrants the improvements," he said.

Ralph Makaiau, Kuilima Resort project manager, said the DOT work was the result of a community-based initiative.

Makaiau said the Ko'olauloa Traffic Safety Coalition was formed to spearhead a drive to get safety improvements made at the resort entrance. The coalition campaigned for federal money to be earmarked to fix the problem because there have been so many accidents.

"The intent was to have no more accidents there, because we had just suffered the loss of high school children," said Makaiau. "One of them was my nephew.

"So we put that coalition together to specifically correct the traffic issues there. It was all about the safety issues. That's the only thing. So this initiative came outside the Turtle Bay scope."

That kind of talk causes some residents to bristle.

"How could that possibly be out of Turtle Bay's scope?" said an incredulous Cunningham. "It's right at their front door. And there it is in the unilateral agreement, in black and white — the hotel owner will pay for improvements in front of the hotel."

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.