2009-11-06 TBOSCHETTI - Laserfiche WebLink

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LEITHEAD TODD: Yeah, I just wanted to make a few comments about what occurs as a city grows and you have the changing uses in a community. Puueo at one time was all single family residences. And, in fact, at one point I think parts of it were referred to as Hilo’s Knobb Hill when some of the higher end homes were put in. And then zoning changed in the area, apartment buildings came in. It had a mixed impact. It has increased the value of some properties, and it has led to neglect of others because it has become rentals. And usually when you have owner-occupants you have higher values and people tend to take better care of their own property as opposed to rentals, not to say that renters are all not going to take care, but it’s just a general trend. The decrease in values over the last two years probably have nothing to do whether there are apartment buildings, however, on Kapiolani Street. I am in a single family residential subdivision in mauka Kaumana where there have been no apartments and no changes in designation, and I now owe more on my mortgage than my home is worth; and that has occurred in two years because I refinanced two years ago. And two years ago my home was valued at about $340,000 and today’s market I would be lucky to be able to sell it for $200,000, a little over $200,000. So I’ve lost at least a third, if not more, of the value of my home with no apartments in the building. It’s just the economy. In some areas of the islands where apartments have come in, if you go down in the Keaukaha, there are multiple high rises; and over time the value of the other properties in that area has increased rather than gone down which, you know, is a surprise perhaps. It will have an impact on traffic, it will have an impact on whether there’s a change in nature. But in terms of this particular project, if you look around it, you have other apartments in that area. If you go mauka you have the Pacific Heights town house which is significantly denser. You’re also very close to areas that are designated as a Low Income Housing. The RD-3.75 is basically Lanikala Housing that you have in that area. Hilinai Street was done as an affordable housing project; and that’s a mixed bag of whether those homes are of or not. If you drive through that area that’s in close proximity to where you live. The difficulty, I think, for a lot of people who live in some areas that are close to the urban core of Hilo is going to be that as time goes by and Hilo grows, from almost all planning perspectives, you want to increase density in your Urban core. Because you want apartments close to where you’re going to have transit, you’re going to have apartments close to where you have amenities. You want it close to where you have shopping so that you can encourage walking and you can encourage use of those amenities. And the difficulty is that as the nature of Hilo changes and some of these occur in older neighborhoods, there’s going to be a bumpy road. But I have to be honest, that if there were a new CDP I suspect that very much like what Kona has done this area would still be identified for Multiple Family and for increased density because of its proximity to the Urban core. Because that’s how you plan. If you want to prevent Urban sprawl then you have to have increased density in your Urban core. It doesn’t provide any solace to the homeowners who live next door to when this is occurring. What you can hope for though and, you know, I would hope that the property owner, if in fact this is approved, is that he has an interest in keeping his place in good shape in trying to present something that he can market. And so, you know, there’s some incentive there that he needs to keep the property up; otherwise, he can’t attract tenants, and that he has to provide something that’s attractive in order to be able to market the units. 15 EXHIBIT A