2016-09-28 BDHRA Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

between your meetings is based on your comments, your observations, input we get from the public who attend, either by written or by verbal testimony. Then what we do is we reassess all that information, we go out, we make efforts to get answers from either industry folks or business community, things of that nature so that we have some more foundation before come to you with our next round. Because we actually had two months to continue to refine this plan, we’ve had more opportunity to discuss some of what we’re doing here with the industry, the visitor industry, what they’re‒‒what they feel the visitor unit requirements need to be in order to get Banyan Drive up to a capacity where the airlines themselves can consider adding additional lift to Hilo to support that. We also did a walking audit with the two primary principals for the Blue Zones program that conduct the built urban environment component for Banyan Drive. So we’ve integrated some of those concepts along, for pedestrian ways, ways to perhaps reduce the speed on Banyan Drive, different alternatives for parking‒‒in other words, for example, why take up developable property for parking, why not just put it on street, things of that nature. If you narrow down the streets to slow down traffic, that additional streetway could be used for pedestrian purposes or parking, different kinds. So we had that tour, I think you were all invited, you weren’t able to make it. So it’s things of that nature that we’ve done. But what I want to say is, you know, one of the proposals that came to the Agency, came to us and the Agency, in response to these plans, these two versions of plans, was a proposal by the current lessee of the Naniloa Hotel and the golf course property; I think you folks have that in your packet. What happened is that proposal‒‒it’s an interesting proposal, it’s a pretty straightforward depiction of what that land owner’s view of what he thought should happen at Banyan Drive was, and so early this morning he and the Mayor and some of us met in the Mayor’s office to kind of get some clarification on what was going on behind that proposal, what the thought process was, so on and so forth. What came out of that actually, is a hand-shake agreement between the leaseholder of the golf course property and the County to actually try and structure a memorandum of agreement whereby the County could participate in a revitalization effort for portions of his property as well as Banyan Drive as a whole. So it’s kind of a package deal; the Mayor made a commitment that if he got an agreement with the land owner, that the County would initiate these efforts. It has really nothing to do with the plan, or the Agency, and anything. It grew out of this meeting to describe what he felt would work, and he basically said, ‘Yeah, you know, your map shows a line dividing the property into two portions,’ he’s basically committed to allocating that whole top half into this initial effort, which basically is really consistent with what we’re trying to accomplish here. The second thing is that some of the discussions on the other retail component got to be quite interesting because what it involves is some ways to actually finance some of these projects. So what I’m going to ask the Agency to do is to take a look at the two versions we have here, but not really take an action on it because what we want to do is we want to vet some of the ideas that came out of this morning’s meeting, which may or may not change the plan at all, very significantly. But what it will do is it will provide you with a better idea of how this program can actually be implemented. I’ve already been in Page 13 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes