2008-06-06 TSUMIDA - Laserfiche WebLink

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like they are making efforts in the community to put this, to do the road improvements that are required. You know how things work in government, it takes a while. And they’re working through their community association, so -. But, again, I think we need to look at this as a precedent for what we’re going to do in the other three cases that are going to be coming up before us very shortly. WATANABE: Okay, any further comments? Mr. Rho, you have any? RHO: Actually I have a question, and I’m not sure you can answer my question. But there’s this, and all of you know I don’t live in Hilo, so I’m not really familiar. But I wanted to know when the Shipman Industrial area was available to be occupied, was it like five years ago, six years ago, two years ago? YUEN: It was zoned in the mid-1980’s and has been established for at least a decade, probably more. RHO: When you say established -? YUEN: Like there are lots, there are subdivided lots in there for 10 or 15 years. RHO: So if I had a business six years ago, a trucking business and I needed parking spaces, I could have or I could go to Shipman and lease a piece of land from them to do this business? YUEN: Yes. RHO: So when all of these applications, and I’m not talking about the applicant today, but in the previous, they provided Exhibits A, B, C, D, and E, as well as the stuff that’s across the highway, and I’m not sure when those were approved. Why were they approved when we had an industrial area, I don’t know where Shipman is exactly, but let’s say it was 10 miles down the road? Cause it seems to me what’s happening now is we’re going to, or the possibility is that we reject this application, keep them at Shipman, and start rejecting all these other applications that will come up for renewal and also say that there are Industrial spots 10 miles down the road. My question is why didn’t we do that six or seven years ago, or eight years go, or whenever? It’s like we want to shut the door now that we opened it after five years. And it’s, as far as I’m concerned, it’s very difficult to do that. And we have nobody, at least today as far as I can tell, we have nobody testifying against this applicant’s application to develop basically a parking lot in that area. I mean that isn’t a question. That’s a statement. But my question again is it just doesn’t make sense to me that -. YUEN: Well, it’s a difficult question because the basic idea of zoning is that you go to a zoned area, that you’re supposed to, say a Light Industrial area, you zone an area and people go to an area that’s zoned for that use. And it’s not really compatible to take an area of what most of the, well, what is largely a residential area long term and put Light Industrial buildings in it. Now why did we do this, why do we do something different? We were persuaded by the argument that there should be opportunities for businesses in closer proximity to the residential areas. The businesses that came forward did have some indication that they had a need to be closer or that they would be useful closer to this, what’s really becoming a major EXHIBIT C 21