2005-06-17 HUGGETT SMA03-007 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

shes currently proposing an ordinance which is going to give Hawai¡i County a ordinance for a minimum driveway width. And youve also, I think Josh Green sent a letter to the Planning Department yesterday also saying that he hopes that well be able to insure the safety of our driveways until that ordinance is put in place. Just to give you a little bit of history on this Ive been working on the driveway ordinance issue since early in 2004. We had really hoped that once the property had been put up for sale that-. And actually I should say it had been put on hold, that we would be able to get a driveway ordinance in place before the project came back in front of you again so we wouldnt have to deal with this. Unfortunately we hit a little roadblock in the Planning Department back in November of last year. They had replied that they thought that it would be better if we waited for this because we needed to wait until there was a bunch of changes being made to the code. I sent them a letter asked them when that might be and what we could do in the interim. I didnt hear anything for 4 months. It took some phone calls and getting Virginia Isbell involved to get things back on track. So we essentially lost 4 months there and thats why were asking you to put on a contingency on this project today. Just to let you knowthatorifyoucould,Idontknowifyouallhavetheslidesuptherebutonthesecondslide there is various driveway recommendations that are in place here. Theres this one here, theres actually 5 different ones. We have the ITE standard, which recommends a 30 foot width for commercial driveways that includes units that are multi-family dwellings with 5 units or more which the proposed project would fall into that category. Thirty feet is recommended and safe. They say however if you get 24 feet in width and you get 20-foot flares that will help you minimize the impact of the decreased width. After that we had the Department of Public Works submitted 2 different plans for the driveway. Their preferred plan called for 24-foot widths with 15-foot flares but they said we could maybe go down to a minimum of 20 feet with 15-foot flares also. The last recommendation is the one thats the condition before you on- today and it calls for a 20-foot easement width, it doesnt mention the pavement width and it also calls for no flares. This would be the least safe of all the options that are on the table right now so we have some concerns about that and we dont feel its sufficient. You might ask, well 2 things Id like to point out real quickly, one is the ITEs minimum recommendation and the DPWs preferred recommendation are very close to each other, twenty four feet slightly different on the flares. Thats- those are where we feel we should be. The other recommendations, youll notice that the Planning Departments condition on there is 33% smaller than the recommended ITE guidelines, dropping from 30 feet down to 20 feet theres no flares on there. The flares are what you need to, if youre going to decrease width you have to add flares to increase the safety. So thats what were looking is to get something thats more in the middle on this put in as a condition. You might ask me why does this matter so much. Id urge people, if you have just a couple of minutes after the meeting and you can drive down Alii Drive theres a place called Lulus Bar and Restaurant right across from Huggo's on the Rocks. Stand there and have your back facing the ocean, theres a driveway on the right hand side of the building. Its 21 feet. It serves a commercial building, it should follow the same guidelines as are in this document. Theres little or no flares on this driveway. Just stand there for 5 minutes, watch the cars come in and out. People slow way down to make the- a very sharp turn into this small driveway. You also notice when people are coming out the other direction a lot of the times the people on Alii Drive will stop. If theyre trying to turn in they have to stop, let the other person come out before they can make the turn to get in. Now you know back in the 70s when there was 700 people in Kona maybe a 20 foot driveway was fine. Were dealing with a completely different problem here today. We have a traffic issue going on and we have these large SUVs and pick-up trucks that EXHIBIT A 9