2010-03-05 TPD CDH - Laserfiche WebLink

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current, we’ve been around for, I don’t know, Taka, you probably know more than I do, maybe 30 years as an organization. We’re about 150 members. It’s a mix of organizations, mix of individuals and businesses and landowners in Downtown. We have a mission, kind of a day-to- day mission, of trying to improve and enhance the activities, and implement some of the goals relating to revitalization in Downtown. Our testimony on this conversation is really not positional at this point. We’re still trying to listen and trying to understand what the variety of different groups are going to say. But we do have some particular thoughts we want to share with you on them. Our priorities Downtown, our government priorities Downtown are really kind of along the lines of what Mr. Koehnen spoke about in terms of getting out of the way regulatorily to allow investment to happen. And we see the two places where that’s most important today, is in backing up on the 2006 Flood Ordinance that this County Council adopted some time in 2006, really in relationship to some issues in other parts of the State or other parts of the island. But it caught Downtown kind of like the turtle or the dolphin in the drift net. It wasn’t intended to affect Downtown but it really ultimately, has ultimately condemned much of the Kamehameha Avenue frontage to some high level of investment requirements to simply repair what is in Downtown. So we’re working with the Council in that regard, and we’ve been working hard on on-going efforts to try and get the Building Department to use some of their own discretion to allow the small investments to move forwarded without kind of being bloodied through that process, and to use the discretion necessary to renovate in renovated circumstances. So those are our priorities; and that’s where we’ve been trying to focus our attention. We’ve also suggested that there’s a need for design guidelines. There is a body of design guidelines that were adopted by HRA called Rule 6 under the HRA Rules. When HRA, the Hawaii Redevelopment Authority, went away those guidelines were somewhat hanaied to the County. And the Planning Department, they used them; but they’re still kind of written in the old term and in the old way. And our intention is to try and update those, bring those back so that you can provide for a developer and for the County a clear view of, you know, what the preferred sense of look and character Downtown is about. So we’ve written to the County over the years to encourage that. That’s where we would choose to begin this conversation, is that the, coming up with a body of guidelines rather than ordinances related to specific design. The height limit is an interesting one as it relates to the specific proposal. I think the highest height limit through much of the island is about 55 feet, except for the exceptions that are provided for Kahaluu and Keauhou in Kona. I think those are 90 feet. And Hilo town both in the Resort designation, in the CVH zone, and in all of the Commercial, General Commercial zone is 120 feet. And aside from one building in Downtown nobody has come close to taking advantage of that for very practical reasons, for very economic reasons. And we think in Downtown although the idea of a 120-foot building in the middle of these old style-buildings is a little bit, you know, it’s a stunning thought and would probably undercut the iconic field that Downtown has today, practically I don’t see it as a realty, don’t see it as an issue that’s driving land ownership today. People are not buying land cause they can put 120 feet there. Rents are $2, $3. If you go and build something new, you’re going to be needing to getting rents in the $10, $30, $30 a square foot kind of range in order to justify that investment. So is it a real issue? Maybe in some sense of vision perhaps. But as a practical economic issue, doesn’t seem to be a key one to us. Maybe the most important issue for us is the issue of the design criteria. There are three pieces of design suggested by ordinance. 3 EXHIBIT C