2008-05-22 TKONAHEIGHTS - Laserfiche WebLink

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And we’ve got our project community consultants James Ken and Associates represented by Trish Malone who’s back there. And Carlsmith by myself and Jennifer Benckwho’s right here. We’re going to be turning the presentation of the project over to Mr. Atta. He’ll give us a brief overview of the project, touching upon the LEEDS and the other issues that have been raised by the Commissioners thus far. Then we’ll go into a discussion of our proposed conditions that we submitted to you today in my letter. Thank you very much. WATANABE: Thank you. Yeah, state your address, please, Mr. Atta. ATTA: My name is George Atta, I’m with Group 70 International. My address is 925 Bethel Street, Honolulu, Hawaii. Actually the staff did a fairly good comprehensive overview of the project so I’m just going to add some additional highlights which I think are relevant to the overall description of the project. First of all, we’re looking at an average price point of about $650,000 as for the market homes. Of course, the affordable hosing will be within the affordable housing range. And we have been in discussion with the Housing Office and we will be attempting to, we will be targeting 30 percent of our credits for affordable housing. The LEED situation actually is something that’s also very important to us. So we will be, we’ve been in discussion with the Department of Water Supply to reduce the water consumption. So to reiterate LEED is a new, I guess, methodology for building green buildings. And as staff mentioned, we’re a registered LEED Project. What that means is that every house, every structure in this development will at least meet a minimum of a, LEED certified, so it will be every building will be a green building. We’ve also added upgrades so that we will have options for individual homeowners to add photovoltaic panels on their roofs. So they will have standard solar hot water heater and as an add-on they will also have photovoltaics and other options. And we’re still evolving some of the options that we have. As part of the LEED criteria we are planning fixtures and things within the house as well as landscape designs that will cut the per-unit consumption of water by 30 percent; and that will reduce the overall water demand for the project. We have a cultural advisory committee; and working with them they’ve asked that we maintain our landscaped concept and palette so that it’s compatible with Kona. So we will be having a native species palette that will be working and it will also be a zeriscape palette so that it will be compatible with the climate. One thing we would like to mention, if you look at the overall General Plan map, we view our project as an in-fill project because the zoning to the, Keauhou to the south already has all of the zoning for development, and both the north and the south side has already been placed in the State Urban District. So this strip of land, our eleven-acre parcel, is in a small strip of land that is in Ag and so we think it qualifies as an in-fill development. We note that the Kona CDP refers to a preference for developments that are in-fill and of a slightly higher density, and that one of the TOD locations is just along Alii Drive; and so we’re close to the TOD location. And, we’re an in-fill development and with slightly density; and we think those are elements of the Kona CDP that we’re consistent with. So we think we’ve been, I mean, we’ve had Trish Malone attending the meetings and keeping us abreast as to what the elements of the Plan as I think most of you are aware, the Plan has been evolving over a long EXHIBIT B 7