2016-07-07 Hearing Transcript - Hilo Medical Center REZ 14-175

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I passed out a three, you know, three -sheet item. The first one is like—reflects like the map which is the rezoning ordinance back in 19I believe it was 1995. And, it shows the area where the Hilo Surgical Center is and the Rehab at Hilo facility as, you know, in relation to the balance of the property, and, when that, subsequent to the rezoning of that area, the project was developed; the surgical center was developed, as well as the Rehab of the Pacific, was developed. We all know, I think, like as the request shows, the request is essentially to allow for additional parking. When the project was initially approved, the Zoning Code at that time required five stalls for every physician, and they had met that requirement. Plan Approval was issued. Subsequent to that, the Zoning Code was changed to say that they eliminated the number of stall requirement per physician, but instead just went generically, and, the generic requirement is one stall for every 300 square feet. So, ironically, with the change in the Zoning Code relative to parking, now you actually have less stalls required, you know, for a physician. It averages out like on an average a thousand square foot office, physician's office building, you now require like about three, maybe at the most four, parking stalls. Notwithstanding that, I think the surgical center and the rest of that complex, they probably fell victim, you know, to their success and, you know, just the overall demand for medical service. The problem is that, with the parking is that you have overlapping requirements. You know, it's just like you're gonna go to the golf course if you're a golfer, and, you know, your tee time is at 8 o'clock and another set of tee time is like around 11 or 11:30. You know, you just have that crossover, so during that crossover period, you know, you have really have a lack of parking stalls. Likewise, you know, at the surgical center what happens is that, you know, you have people who used to come in for outpatient appointments and, you know, in the past, they used to be scheduled maybe hour, hour and a half, but still then, you have some measure of overlap because, you know, you have people coming in to pick them up; others coming in for the next surgery. The victim of their success is that now they are a little more efficient so rather than doing maybe hour and a half or two hours per patient, they'll be able to do like half an hour to one hour and so, you know, gradually, it increases the level of service but, nevertheless, it compounds the parking problem. So, this is like, over the last I guess like eight years, what the Applicant and the landowner have been trying to do is best address this parking situation, and the problem has become over time again, because of the victim of success of the surgical center, it has become more of a problem. They had applied back in 2007 for the rezoning of the subject area, but unfortunately, that was denied—that was recommended for approval by the Planning Commission and also the Planning Director, then Planning Director, went up to the County Council. The County Council had, for its own reason, did not act on that application. Essentially, denied—denied that application. In 2011, they reapplied. At that time when they reapplied, then I was contacted to see, you know, to assist them with the process, and so during that process in 2011, I tried to kind of like understand what the issues were, then reached out to, you know, particularly the neighboring 5 EXHIBIT C