Matt and Julia LoPresti thought they were buying a home located next to a marina, with boat slips, posh sailing yachts and access to the ocean, when they purchased at Haseko Hawaiʻi’s Ocean Pointe/Hoakalei development in ʻEwa in 2010.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to take my kids out and teach them to sail on a little dinghy, and we’d go out and go fishing, and it would be this amazing thing,’” said Matt LoPresti, a university professor and former state lawmaker. “We were sold hook, line and sinker.”
But instead of the promised marina, the LoPrestis and thousands of other buyers got a lagoon: no slips, no ocean access, no way to sail a little dinghy out to sea from the oceanside planned community. This week, Haseko agreed to pay a group of homebuyers including the LoPrestis $40 million to settle a class action lawsuit that triggered more than a decade of litigation and extensive media coverage.
After 14 years, the case of the disappearing marina is over…