The terrible vertex shading isn't actually directly a result of the importer itself, it's a result of the geometry. Since he's using sketchup to make his geometry and isn't building it one triangle at a time, it's triangulating things for him, which means it optimises for less polygons, which also means huge, stretched and misshapen triangles that when lit using vertices looks awful.
I was actually planning on doing something between an LA remake and an original story; my idea was that it would take place during Link's seven year slumber in OOT. He'd dream an island trial to prepare himself. Never got around to doing it, partly because I wanted to have hardware compatibility and I never got around to making the design doc for the tool suite I had envisioned for said purpose.