2007-05-24 TSUPERSTORE - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAII HEARING TRANSCRIPT May 24, 2007 COUNTY COUNCIL INITIATED AMENDMENT TO A regularly advertised hearing on the ZONING CODE RELATING TO “SUPERSTORES” RETAIL ESTABLISHMENTS was called to order at 2:43 p.m. at the King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel, 75-5660 Palani Road, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, with Chairman William Graham presiding. PRESENT: Takashi Domingo ABSENT & EXCUSED: C. Kimo Alameda William Graham Andrew Iwashita Shelly Ogata Alvin Rho Rene’ Siracusa Rodney Watanabe Rell Woodward Ivan Torigoe, Deputy Corporation Counsel Jeff Darrow, Staff Planner And approximately 14 people from the public in attendance. INITIATOR: COUNTY COUNCIL Amendment to Chapter 25 (Zoning Code), Hawaii County Code 1983 (2005 Edition), as amended, relating to Retail Establishments. The proposed amendment would not permit “superstores” in any zoning district. “Superstore” means a business exceeding 90,000 gross square feet, offering for sale more than 25,000 different stock keeping units, and dedicating more than 20,000 gross square feet of floor area to the sale of groceries. GRAHAM: We’ll move onto our next agenda item today. This one, we have the County Council as initiator; and it’s a proposed amendment to Zoning Code relating to retail establishments. And the proposed amendment would not permit superstores in any zoning district, and we have a definition of superstores. Again this is a Zoning Code issue, so we will only do recommendations. My understanding is we will have two hearings: One here today in Kona and then our next meeting in Hilo. So we will not be taking any voting action on this today, but just getting a little description from Jeff on the intention and how this Zoning Code amendment would work, and also take public testimony. So Jeff, if you would. DARROW: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just briefly I’ll reiterate a little bit of the background and recommendation as provided by the Planning Director. This is a County Council initiated action requesting that the Planning Director and the Planning Commission review and recommend an approval to be able to ban superstores on the island. At this time they are proposing to define “superstore” as a business exceeding 90,000 gross square feet, offering for sale more than 25,000 different stockkeeping units, and dedicating more than 20,000 gross square feet of floor area to the sale of groceries. For reference, a stockkeeping unit is an individual type of sales item. And within the background it uses an illustration of a can of soup EXHIBIT E 1