The Galbraith Estate has selected a new broker for 2,100 acres of land in Central Oahu that it is trying to sell.

Bank of Hawaii Corp., the trustee for the estate, today named PM Realty Group as the exclusive broker for the Galbraith lands, replacing Cushman & Wakefield and Sofos Realty Corp.

The property officially goes back on the market on July 28.

PM Realty’s hiring comes weeks after an effort to sell the land to Canadian developer Dennis Blain fell through. Blain’s $40 million offer was terminated by the bank after Blain asked for a 60-day extension.

Despite a soft real estate market, the new sales effort could get a boost from a measure passed by the Legislature this year.

The law, which took effect today, allows owners of ag lands to petition the state Land Use Commission to convert 15 percent of their acreage for urban or rural use so long as they preserve 85 percent of their land for high-quality agricultural uses.

That means that a buyer of the Galbraith lands could seek to convert 315 acres for housing. A developer could build more than 1,000 homes on that much land.

But any buyer would have to compete with public and private sector efforts to preserve the land for agricultural use. A separate measure, which was passed by the state Legislature this year, dedicates $13 million toward that plan.

Based in Houston, PM Realty Group is a privately held, national real estate company with more than 1,300 employees and 20 offices nationwide. In Hawaii, the company manages about 2 million square feet of property and its clients include Chevron, Morgan Stanley, Pacific Guardian Life and the Employees’ Retirement System of the State of Hawaii.

A proposal that would allow owners of prime agricultural lands to covert 15 percent of their acreage for new housing development represents a potential windfall worth tens of millions of dollars.

The controversial measure, which was passed by the Legislature this year without a full hearing, aims to protect Hawaii’s dwindling ag lands.

It allows landowners to petition the state Land Use Commission to lock up 85 percent of their high-quality agricultural land in exchange for allowing them to use 15 percent of their acreage for urban or rural use.

Opponents say the bill accelerate the loss of farm land by creating rural residential subdivisions that inflate land values and increase the cost of farming.

Here’s how some of the state’s biggest landowners could theoretically benefit from the bill:

– Kamehameha Schools, which owns 200,000 acres of agricultural lands, could seek to convert 30,000 acres of those lands for housing,

– Alexander & Baldwin Inc. could see 6,000 acres of its 40,000 acres of ag land used for residential development;

– About 1,350 of James Campbell Co.’s ag lands could be dedicate for future housing;

– Of Maui Land & Pineapple Co. could add another 630 acres to its inventory of residential development;

– Of Dole Food Co.’s 2,900 acres of agricultural lands, 435 could go to new home building.

And that doesn’t include Parker Ranch’s vast landholdings. The ranch owns more than 150,000 acres throughout the Big Island and most of it is zone for agricultural uses.

Of course, none of the landowners are going to try to convert their lands overnight.
The landowners also need to follow the county permitting procedures and other state land use laws.

But the conversion will allow them to cut years off of the zoning process.

One would have expected the state Legislature to have at least held hearings on the bill which such a broad impact on property values, land use and the future of farming in Hawaiçi.

The passage of the bill by conference committee members in the waning days of the legislative session without public debate represent a return to the bad old days of smoke-filled rooms and back-room deals.

Call it a quick rebound.

Former Aloha Airlines Chief Executive Officer David Banmiller is rumored to be the next CEO of Air Jamaica.

RadioJamaica.com reported today that appointment of Banmiller could be announced soon by the airline’s board. (See)

Banmiller declined comment today.

Banmiller, who lost his position at Aloha on March 31 when the state’s number 2 carrier shutdown passenger service and laid off 1,900 workers, is Air Jamaica’s former chief operating officer.

His expertise as an airline turnaround expert will be in big demand at Jamaica’s financially troubled national airline.

Banmiller is credited for helping Aloha emerge from its first bankruptcy in 2006. He also was was instrumental in the recovery of Minneapolis-based Sun Country Airlines in 2001.

The liquidation of Aloha Airlines continues.

The defunct airline’s court-appointed trustee Dane Field has already sold Aloha’s profitable cargo division, its contract services unit and their receivables for more than $20 million.

And last week the carrier’s main investor Yucaipa Co. bid $10 million of the debt owed by the airline to acquire the legal claims against go! airlines’ Phoenix-based parent Mesa Air Group.

Jim Wagner, Field’s attorney, said after a court hearing last week that Field plans to sell another $10 million to $15 million for remaining aircraft frames, engines and aircraft parts.

That would bring the total haul to somewhere between $40 million to $46 million for the defunct airlines assets.

Aloha’s break-up value is just a fraction of the $215 million in assets that the company listed when it filed for bankruptcy protection on March 20.

That loss of value gives you some measure of how much more a living company, its employees and its goodwill is worth to a community than a mere shell of a corporation.

Hawaii’s real estate market was softening, the U.S. economy was battling recession and the state had just seen its largest-ever mass layoff.

The failure to approve a multi-billion dollar mass transit system on Oahu dominated local headlines for weeks.

Sound familiar?

That was 1992. It was the beginning of the longest and deepest economic downturn in state history.

Some local policy makers will tell you that things are very different today. They pat themselves on the back and say that the economy has made a lot of structural changes and is better able to weather the financial storms that hit our shores.

I’m not entirely convinced by that.

The shutdown of Aloha Airlines — whose impact on the local zeitgeist was similar to that of the 1992 closure of Hamakua Sugar — is worrisome.

High fuel costs are affecting that moves from car sales, shipping costs, air fares and visitor arrivals.

The financial turmoil in the credit markets probably won’t have as big an impact here as the collapse of the 1990s Japanese investment bubble but it definitely will be felt by the local real estate sector. (Vulture investors — who made millions off of the 1990s recession — are beginning to lick their chops.)

I suspect we’re at one of those critical economic junctures where the policies we adopt now will have long lasting impact. It would be tragic if we allowed history to repeat itself.