The Department of Education is in default on almost $10,000 in rent and fees for a Kauai property owned by the Agribusiness Development Corp. and has breached the terms of the lease.

The DOE has leased the 10-acre Kekaha property since March last year, taking over a lease from Beck’s Hybrid Seeds. The department told ADC it intended to build facilities for education and food production.

But the DOE has yet to pay ADC anything toward the $9,294 it has accrued in fees and rent over the past 12 months. A violation notice was sent to DOE on Feb. 15 but the DOE missed its payment deadline Saturday.

The DOE subleased the land to the Kekaha Agriculture Association, which was never requested or approved by the ADC, according to staff.

ADC Executive Director Wendy Gady told board members at their meeting Thursday that the DOE had not replied to any ADC correspondence over the past 12 months.

Staff requested the board refer the matter to the attorney general.

A DOE official asked the ADC board for a reprieve during the meeting.

“I just want to apologize. I just came on board,” Jadine Urasaki of the DOE’s Office of School Facilities and Support Services said.

Urasaki asked for a 60-day extension so she could find her predecessor’s records, get a grasp of the situation and help the DOE settle the balance.

The rent delinquency and failure to reply to any correspondence existed before Urasaki came on board, Gady added.

ADC gave the DOE 30 days to respond, along with some justification for the delay.

Board members were sympathetic because the DOE may ultimately end up providing something bigger to the ADC.

“There’s talk about it becoming a food innovation facility … for ADC,” said ADC board member Dane Wicker, who’s also deputy director of the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

The DOE’s not-yet-built food and product innovation center could fall under the innovation network that the ADC has envisioned.

Senate Bill 2500 will establish the network and include similar facilities on other islands. Those facilities include the $8.5 million Maui Food Innovation Center and $22 million Wahiawa Value-Added Product Development Center.

The value-added centers are intended to help provide career pathways, incubate new food businesses and provide a pipeline for local agricultural produce to reach markets.

The property had been in DOE’s sights since at least 2021. That year, former Assistant Superintendent Randall Tanaka said the Kekaha site was being considered as a site for a centralized “mega kitchen.”

According to meeting minutes from March 2023, Tanaka told the ADC board that the Kekaha location provided a “tremendous opportunity for what they want to accomplish or where they hope to take the renaissance of ag in the State of Hawaii.”

The DOE kitchen was expected to be similar to a $35 million facility that falls under the Whitmore Project in Wahiawa, a project championed by Senate Ways and Means Chair Donovan Dela Cruz.

Tanaka was fired in December amid a controversy over plans to surrender more than $450 million in funding for construction projects. He now works for WAM Deputy Chair Sharon Moriwaki.

“Hawaii Grown” is funded in part by grants from the Stupski Foundation, Ulupono Fund at the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.