2009-08-28 TKOHALA - Laserfiche WebLink

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that that was going to be too much of a downzoning that would subject them to liability. They knew that we had already retained mainland counsel and HawaiÒi counsel for the takings litigation both at the HawaiÒi Supreme Court level and the U.S. Supreme Court level. And so I think that they felt that we were ready to go and they didnÓt feel comfortable that the 15-acre zoning, downzoning was going to be passing constitutional muster. So what we did was, since the Planning Commission meeting in November of last year, weÓve been in planning efforts. We work with Greg Mooers who can give you a little bit of a report on where we are today. And I think what youÓll see is that what we are thinking about proposing Î and I want to stress this is still very early on in the game Î what we are thinking of proposing is going to be similar to what the Planning Director was proposing. However, we feel that the 3- acre, is what we are going to propose, RA 3-acre zoning is going to be more in keeping with the neighborhood. As you see in the Kohala Ranch, is a project up there, the light-blue is 3-acre zoning. The next door to us is 5-acre zoning. So itÓs all consistent with the neighborhood. And what we are doing today is a status report without asking for any vote by the Planning Commission. But we would like comments from you, so we can take that back into our planning effort. We wanted to come and give you something to look at and to chew on because I think itÓs important for my client to have some feedback from you and to then decide whether we either come back in on time extension on the existing SMA Permit or we file a brand new change of zone and an SMA Permit. So weÓre going to be discussing that issue with the Planning Director. WeÓd obviously like to preserve the entitlements that we have until there is a final action on the eventual approvals for the project, if we were so lucky. So IÓll go ahead and turn that over to Greg Mooers to describe. His efforts have been over the course of the last several months. MOOERS: Thank you, Steve. Steve approached myself about, or asked me if I take a look at the project maybe from a fresh perspective. I worked with Belt Collins Hawaii to provide planning and engineering backup to reevaluate the project site. Really two areas I looked at initially Î one with the institutional consideration which is the General Plan, the zoning, the existing permitting, SMA, of not only this property but the surrounding property, and then the second issue was looking at infrastructural issues, the actual topography of the property, setbacks from the ocean, setbacks from the roadway, gulches, archaeological sites, and try to come up with what we felt was the best use of the property without disturbing the existing landforms. We went through several iterations, have been back and forth over the site many times, and believe that where we are headed with this, the site plan that is shown there Î do you have the individual site plans or -? Just the big site plan. So what we tried to do is, the first thing we did is we drew a line at 150 feet away from the roadway to provide a setback from the roadway Î if you are familiar with the topography here and also if you look at the aerial photo, the property does drop away from the roadway quite a bit Î so that, like moving 150 feet out, it would eliminate any visual impact of someone driving on Akoni Pule Highway and looking to the distance or horizon and to Kohala coast from seeing any structures at all; the only structure you would see is if you are at the edge of the road and you look down on the property. There are no coastline views from the roadway; in other words you do not see the surf line anywhere along this property because of the topography and because of the existing vegetation. The second thing we did is we drew up a 150-foot setback along the ocean to move all of structures back away so there will be no impact visually looking from the ocean up toward the highway, or try to minimize the impact, I should say. The other thing we did is we placed and sited all of the archaeological features EXHIBIT B 3