2016-09-28 BDHRA Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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KANUHA: Correct. That’s a concept we’re advocating there. Again, there was some sentiment for leaving that area as open space, which is why we provided both alternatives for you folks to think about. We, and I in particular, have had some pretty lengthy discussions with the industry folks in terms of what level of inventory does Banyan Drive need to be, and its always been a huge number of rooms. Okay well, that’s probably not gonna work for the marketplace, the space we got available, so what we’ve tried to do is we’ve tried to make sure that there’s enough alternatives here. The alternatives you see here, that hotel, that freestanding proposed hotel site, what we did is we took, basically, the acreage for Hilo Hawaiian. That gave us some density, what size hotel could fit into that purple area. So that gives you some hotel. The original version did not have Uncle Billy’s into the potential hotel mix. We felt it’s a natural‒‒Hilo Hawaiian on one side, Naniloa on the other side, but it also doesn’t preclude whoever comes in to lease that property for some resort-related use. We’ve had some discussions with conceptually perhaps razing the property, creating a park space in the interim. And then over time, when it goes out for lease, for bid, the adjoining properties, either the Naniloa or Hilo Hawaiian or in concert, could acquire that property for additional parking. Actually, one of the concepts I’ve heard in the discussion is additional parking and a conference center on the second floor. So what you would have is kind of an alternative conference community center, ocean oriented in this particular case. So our program leaves those options open without saying it has to be one or the other. But I think basically what this scenario does is it leaves room for maybe another six, seven hundred rooms possible potential. We had to provide enough room for that on the industry side, to accommodate enough inventory capacity. DELIMA: My comment really is two-fold about that. One, when‒‒growing up here and recalling the Banyan Drive as a major place of activity, parking was always a problem and that golf course parking lot used to be full whenever there was a major event at the Naniloa. And even now, it can be, parking can be very bad if someone is having a wedding or a function because it’s not available for parking right now because of the construction and other reasons‒‒they’re using it for storage. So when Mr. Taniguchi was at the last meeting, he made a remark about the need for parking and I do think though that, and I understand why you’re proposing another hotel, but to be frank, I don’t really see that being something that’s going to happen in the near future, but I can see it being something possible down the road. My reservation is, I thought that one of the visions was that the community convention or conference place could be the possibility of one day perhaps being constructed in a way that it could be served as an amphitheater, conference, where you could actually have the Merrie Monarch rather than at the Tennis Stadium, you could actually have it in an amphitheater kind of something like Tanglewood type of place where you would have under-roof seating as well as open seating in a setting that would look out towards that ocean where that hotel is being proposed. But perhaps there are no view planes, no possibility for that to occur. So that’s how I was envisioning the potential aspect of a community type of center. My other thought was that if it becomes the center for the Merrie Monarch festival where hālau could actually have space to ‒‒ Page 15 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes