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upstairs and suddenly a tsunami hit and people are sleeping up there how hard would it be or <br />easy would it be for them to get all the way down to street level so that they could run. <br />DELA CRUZ: Yeah, so that’s a concern and we’ve scaled it down to not include the <br />hostel at this time. <br />WATANABE: Mr. Alameda? <br />ALAMEDA: I was just going to say I’m curious to hear testimony. <br />WATANABE: Yeah, okay. Do we have any further questions of the applicant? <br />IWASHITA: I just have one. <br />WATANABE: Okay. Yeah, okay, Mr. Iwashita. <br />IWASHITA: Good morning, Keith. I just wanted to make sure you smiled. You were <br />real serious in the meeting. I know him as a real smiley guy. There was mention in the papers <br />that we got before this matter came up today reference to the Envision Downtown Hilo 2025 <br />community-based vision and living action plan and that your project obviously is consistent with <br />the farmers market’s reference in that plan. I just wanted to know if, I couldn’t tell looking at the <br />papers, if you actually talked to the current members of the, I forget what they call it, the <br />committee that’s supposed to make sure that it works. Have you talked with them and gotten <br />their support? <br />DELA CRUZ: The Friends of Downtown Hilo or the Vision Keepers? <br />IWASHITA: I guess the Vision Keepers. <br />DELA CRUZ: I think we reported officially to them in our Downtown Improvement <br />Association Annual meeting in, I think it was 2007; and that was at the Palace Theater, and that <br />was an update of what, you know, what we had so far on the drawings. <br />IWASHITA: What was the response there? <br />DELA CRUZ: It was pretty much positive. Some people voiced concerns about the <br />parking and pedestrian safety; and so we made some headway into mitigating those problems. <br />IWASHITA: And just, if you can spend a minute -. You mentioned you visited other <br />farmers markets, and I have some minimal exposure via television to the benefits that farmers <br />markets provide to a community. Can you spend a minute and share some of your experiences. <br />DELA CRUZ: Well, some of the markets that we’ve looked at in the North Pacific, <br />specifically Pikes Place Market, Grandville Island Market, Longsdale Key Market, Olympia <br />Washington Market, Vancouver, the Victoria Bridge Columbia Market and couple of others in <br />San Francisco. I can’t recall the names. They all generate a lot of the activity and economic <br />diversity in the city or little towns; and that’s what the Hilo Farmers Market I believe has done <br /> EXHIBIT B 11 <br /> <br /> <br />