2004-01-16 Western United Life - Laserfiche WebLink

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of that nature. And I guess we should have gotten them to send a letter in to support it. It would have given you a little bit more balance. SPRINGER:Thank you. ` YAMASHIRO:Understanding of the -. But the Hawaii Island Economic Board had, has taken a formal position in support of the project. They have not sent anything. And they voted it at their last meeting up at Kahu Ranch. SPRINGER:Yeah, we did just get something during the lunch break; something came in from them dated today. YAMASHIRO:Oh. FUJIKAWA:Okay. Director, you need a little bit more time? Go ahead. GRAHAM:Notwithstanding our Director working real hard there, but I would like to hear from Mr. Yuen on -, just his general ideas about this project and how he sees it fits into the, you know, greater plans for Hilo. FUJIKAWA:Mr. Yuen. YUEN:Long term, it's definitely a part of town that would, you would expect and look for residential expansion and some commercial expansion, as well as office areas. Across the street is, you have a large office area that's already been developed. It's -, the -, we've had a great deal of testimony about some people wanting it to remain single family only, 10,000 square foot minimum lots. I would support a mix of single family and multi-family buildings. Although we don't have any direct control over the price ranges that things are offered at, a multi-family is much more likely to be in the affordable range. There's also a life cycle and lifestyle element to apartment living. At a certain stage in people's life cycles, they often live in apartments. People getting -, young people moving away from home for the first time, young couples without children, and then at the other end of the life cycle, older people who may not want to keep a yard up anymore. And so we need to have a mix of housing opportunities in Hilo. As far as the general location of this, it's -, it is shown as medium density in the General Plan. It is -, there's already some residential on that side of the highway. It's a logical area for there to be further residential expansion. There are site specific issues here, and the primary site specific issues are traffic impacts and flooding. The flooding would -. We know enough about the flood situation to be comfortable with the conditions that we put on it. In the actual development of the site, it would require a detailed drainage plan that would handle the specifics of how the water would be handled and put into the major drainageways. That level of detail is not something that we expect at the zoning stage. There is a flood map, a FIRM 29