2016-07-29 BDHRA Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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KANUHA: Okay, what we’re segueing into here is, those were the summary of the comments we actually received, you know, from the public during the two public meetings we had. What we’re also‒‒where we want to move now is to get some feedback from the agency on those comments, along with a couple of others that we’re proposing to the agency based on comments we’ve received either in-house or from the agency itself. As Luke mentioned there’s, there’s pretty, pretty strong opposition to any kind of hotel within or in close proximity to the Lili‘uokalani Gardens. We’ve had a really good discussion with the Lili‘uokalani Park committee that takes care of that park, and they’re very receptive to the plan. They do not like the hotel in the park, but they’re not really opposed to a new hotel perhaps across the street, in some area that may not significantly affect the park by being right in it. So, that’s one area we’re going to look at. The other one we’re suggesting the Agency consider is up in the area of the Naniloa, Hilo Hawaiian, the conceptual land use plan talked about a parks open‒‒a park area here, which is essentially the site of Uncle Billy’s. And we’re very aware that both of those hotels are looking quite closely at what would happen to Uncle Billy’s, and so we felt the best use of that particular property was to actually expand the resort bubble to include the Uncle Billy’s parcel along with the Hilo Hawaiian and the Naniloa property for either expansion by a separate owner or maybe integration into one of either one of those projects. The next component is the suggestion from the Agency themselves to retain some resort mixed use for existing resort or residential and commercial in the area that we had proposed for open space. These would be the leases that Mr. Inouye had talked about, Country Club. If you recall, at your last meeting there was some support for retaining those facilities, perhaps upgrading them along the way, but nevertheless the option for what we, what we’re calling a resort mixed use designation in that area. We’re inclined to support a concept along those lines. This comment, basically, is kind of a housekeeping issue where the cruise ship terminal is located is actually quite a bit closer. It’s too close to where it’s actually going to be. It should be further out in this area here. So that’s just kind of a housekeeping issue there. And this comment here talks about from a conceptual standpoint that perception of that, you know that community conference center, cultural center. It’s like way, way, way too big. So what we’re proposing is to actually drop it down to a size that matches more the master plan size. We’re going to be getting into some discussions related to potential number of hotel units that could occur there, and some relationship to what size of a facility we’re talking about. So if, if some of these concepts, deleting this hotel, adding perhaps some more there, integrating Uncle Billy’s into this node, you know, we’ll take a look at what kind of potential units those may be and then get some discussion going with industry folks in terms of what would be an appropriate size for your cultural center, convention center, etcetera. Page 8 of 20 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency July 28, 2016 Minutes