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center. We need to accommodate these women as the only <br /> mammography clinic on this side of the Island. <br /> I guess one could reasonably ask "are you guys dummies? How come <br /> you didn't move to a building with more parking?" Maybe with perfect <br /> hindsight, we should have waited to see the new parking lot approved by <br /> the County Council, but Hilo Medical Center needed our old clinic space <br /> for other purposes and asked us to move. We really didn't think we were <br /> being foolish when we moved to the Punahele Professional building. We <br /> image and biopsy patients of others doctors ,who run back and forth <br /> between their doctor's offices and our clinic. What better place to <br /> practice in Hilo, then the outpatient medical complexes where most of the <br /> referring doctors work? We help surgeons with breast localization, so we <br /> needed to be close both to the Community Surgery Center and the <br /> hospital. The rezoning for the additional lot, which was recommended by <br /> the County of Hawaii Planning Department and the Planning Commission <br /> <br /> was expected to increase the number of available parking spots by almost <br /> 30~. Since that parking lot has been chained off, we've seen women in <br /> their 80's walking several city blocks to reach our clinic. How do these <br /> patients feel, when they see an unused place to park a few yards away? <br /> <br /> There are competing issues here, and we realize that. There is a large belt <br /> of 9 separate medical office complexes that sees hundreds of thousands of <br /> office visits annually. That has changed the character of the <br /> neighborhood for the four residential homes sandwiched between these <br /> medical centers and the Hilo Community Correctional Center. This is a <br /> matter of balancing what is best for these home owners and the nearly <br /> <br /> 80,000 residents of East Hawaii. The Punahele Professional Building should <br /> have and will do a better job of addressing the concerns that have <br /> blocked the use of the parking lot. But let's be fair about things. The <br /> <br /> decision by the County to turn Punahele Street into a major throughfare in <br /> <br /> the morning has had far more impact on traffic and the quiet of this <br /> <br />