2008-03-06 THILOFARMERS MARKET - Laserfiche WebLink

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DAVIS: If need be. You know, and I trust that he’s going to be making a good judgment on that. BOWMAN: Okay, thank you. WATANABE: Do we have any other questions for this testifier? Thank you. Mr.-. PULUOLE: Puluole. WATANABE: Puluole, yeah. PULUOLE: Aloha. WATANABE: Aloha. PULUOLE: My name is Sam Puluole. I’m the executive director of the Hilo Downtown Improvement Association. The address is 329 Kamehameha Avenue, Hilo, Hawaii 96720. We manage the bus terminal right across the street at the Mooheau Bus Terminal, that is part of our contract and part of what we do there. So we are intimately familiar with the market itself; and we refer to that area there really as the gateway to Hilo.There is another gateway which is, runs by Tip’s property, and there’s some exciting things happening over there. But I come here before you this morning, and appreciate the opportunity, to voice the Hilo DIA’s support for this project. I’ve known Mr. Dela Cruz even before I came on as the Director over a year and a half ago; and I’m in pretty much continuous communication with him. I respect his business acumen, but I really appreciate his commitment to having that marketplace and looking at the revitalization as it fits in with the Hilo DIA’s mission to make Hilo a safe place to live, work and play. My comment would be that I trust his sensitivity to the core culture of Hilo, which is our ethnic diversity. And I trust, I’ve looked at some of the renderings and I trust his and his consultants’ commitment to keeping that architecture so that it is in flow with existing structures. And what I want to get to is that it’s the vibrant flavor of what Hilo is really all about, and so this becomes a part of revitalizing that and keeping that core culture, that sensitivity. You know, we have a story that we tell to visitors. We have a website that creates a lot of traffic online, and we already did a feature on the Hilo Farmers Market. So there’s a lot of interest into what Hilo is really all about, and we want to tell that story. We believe this is complimentary to the story of Hilo and it fits well within what Hilo is really all about.And it’s the crown jewel of the Big Island. This is the best preserved Pacific township in the State of Hawai‘i; and this is the story that we tell people, the visitors. We get a lot of traffic that comes through there. It says information office. We have everybody come in through there. And we tell them that, you know, at one time all of the Pacific townships that used to be along the coastline basically had this kind of architecture that we have and, the more important, the core culture of the people that reside there. That area there, especially the Farmers Market, that’s where you have a mixture of visitors, you have a mixture of, well, for a while now cruise ship passengers, you’ve got residents, and you’ve got visiting kamaaina that come through there. So everybody loves the Hilo Farmers Market; and I believe that this revitalization that is now being launched is well EXHIBIT B 18