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GALDONES:Any further questions? Commissioner Alameda. <br />ALAMEDA:This is to the Director. Im just wonderingif- I know theres no place like <br />Hawaii but are there other places in the nation that have considered Agricultural Tourism like <br />what were proposing and how has that pan out? <br />YUEN:Im not sure- certainly there are many places that have a lot of Ag Tourism <br />type activities. Napa Valley wine tasting, youcan go out to the vineyards and theyre not just <br />vineyards, they have wineriesand people go wine tasting. Its quite a big thing. Im not sure <br />how its regulated. I suspect that in many places its pretty free wheeling, in the sense that <br />theres not a lot of regulation to it. We thought about going that route. We have some concerns <br />about it. I think what people in a lot of our neighborhoods would be- a lot of our farm areas are <br />mixed, farms and residential so just to say that somebody- Just to say go ahead and do it, we <br />werent prepared to say that. But to get back to your original question, theres a lot of it, quite a <br />bit of it elsewhere in the country and its become a big thing and there is some elsewhere in <br />Hawaii. To take an example of something that you would want a special permit for, I forget <br />what it was called but in Central Oahu I think Dole has a maze, and they have agricultural <br />productssomeplaceandthatsonaprettybigscale.Now,thatwouldstill-Idontknowhow <br />that was done. I suspect it was done by a special permit and anything like that, anything of that <br />scale certainly we would want to have a special permit here. <br />ALAMEDA:Okay, thank you. <br />GALDONES:Commissioner Graham. <br />GRAHAM:I have another- Ive been thinking about this a good bit since our last <br />meeting and I have one other issue I wanted to bring to the Planning Director but also for the <br />other Commissioners thoughts on. And the gist of the issue is- its sort of, it seems to me that <br />this would sort of bring tourism related destination pretty much everywhere throughout the <br />island. Whereas now, you know its much more pocketed and the particular situation that comes <br />strong to my mind on this was way back in 1987, 1988 when Chalon was proposing a resort at <br />Mahukona so we had these hearings up at North Kohala and the community was fairly slim on <br />the issue but kind of I would say more than anybody else our resident kupuna at that time was <br />Auntie Marie Solomon. And Auntie Marie Solomon came down and sort of said at the public <br />hearing, you know- we can allow this resort at Mahukona because its going to save our folks <br />from having to drive all the way down to South Kohala and all and we can share our recreation <br />area with the tourists and all. However she said, our places where we live and our villages and <br />all of that we can maintain that as our own, not tourist places. So, and I think the community got <br />behind that, I got behind that and the resort was approved. And, not too many years later Chalon <br />wanted to do a restaurant at Upolu Valley. They wanted to do a parking lot and restaurant there <br />and I and some others made it very clear that, given the testimony that came out of Mahukona, <br />the community really was not looking for that. And they withdrew it. So, my concern is <br />essentially, a blanket Agricultural Tourism is okay, essentially it makes tourism destination on a <br />reduce level at least, spread everywhere within all the communities and thats a real concern. <br />Maybe times have changed enough since 87, 88 that, its not quite the same concern it was, I <br />dont know but I want to put that forth for people to think about. <br />3 <br />EXHIBIT E <br /> <br />