2016-10-06 Hearing Transcript - Council Bill 228 (Hilo Medical Center REZ 14-175)

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JACKSON: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay, so the final item on your agenda is a County Council initiated transmittal of Bill 228, Draft 2. This is related to the Change of Zone application for the Hilo Medical Center. And, just to refresh your memory on the location of the property, it's in the South Hilo District just below Komohana Street. You see Komohana Street running in a north -south direction through the middle of the slide. You have Hala`i Hill in this location here, and then Punahele Street makes up the northern boundary of the subject property which is shown in red here. The property is currently zoned Single -Family Residential, and they are requesting Neighborhood Commercial zoning. So, just to give you a chronology of what brings us to this point, the application for Change of Zone was heard by your Commission in July of this year, and the Commission voted five -zero to forward an unfavorable recommendation to the County Council. At the time you heard the application, the Applicant proposed to use the property for a parking lot and to be used by the employees of the adjacent medical buildings with vehicular access from Punahele Street and pedestrian access between the subject property and the medical building properties. So, at that time, the Applicant had proposed to have vehicular access come from Punahele Street into the proposed parking lot and then employees of the medical center buildings here would walls to and from the employee parking lot through a pedestrian access here. So, then, your recommendation went up to the County Council's Committee on Planning. On August 16th, they considered the request, and they voted to support the Change of Zone request and to amend Bill 228 with adding conditions of approval. At that time, the—to address the community's concerns about increased traffic on Punahele Street, the Applicant proposed to eliminate vehicular access to the property from Punahele and instead provide vehicular access through the medical center building parking lot to the subject property, and I'll show you that in just a minute. So, now we're here today. The Committee on Planning transmitted Bill 228 to you to consider the Change of Zone conditions of approval and seek your recommendation on the bill with the conditions of approval. So, this is again the property. When the Council heard this application, the Applicant had proposed instead of having vehicular access from Punahele Street, having access through Pu`uhonu Way along the driveway through here and then a vehicular access connecting these two properties. So, the Planning Director the County Council asked that the Planning Director provide a recommendation as well as the Planning Commission on Bill 228, so we transmitted two recommendations to the Commission. One was our original recommendation and then we provided a supplemental, I think earlier this week, and both of those recommendations are unfavorable for the following reasons. 2 EXHIBIT F