2016-09-28 BDHRA Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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center will do away with the golf course which is needed for two basic reasons, the greens will accentuate the Banyan Drive along the way from our royal palm trees at the entrance by Ken’s to the end of our Banyan Drive by Suisan. And the other reason is that most hotel complex have a golf course to advertise and utilize, we’re talking about all these hotels on Banyan Drive. Even though it’s a nine hole, I do have (inaudible) tourist that come in and they participate there. All tourist visiting the Hilo area already have reservations and their time is limited and taken up by their site seeing activities; they’re not going to have time to go to the community center. They have priorities on where they want to visit. The activities at the cultural center will interfere with the already congested traffic and parking of the hotel guests and future of existing restaurants. This will be especially true during Merrie Monarch week, or any other community activity that may have come up. I thank you very much for your participation. DELIMA: Thank you for your testimony. Any questions? Okay, thank you for coming, Mr. Inouye. I appreciate you providing us the written testimony. Okay and we have next, Patty Heidenfeldt. HEIDENFELDT: Good afternoon. At first I want to thank you for this opportunity. Want to let you briefly know a little bit about myself, I’m fourth generation on the Inouye side from O‘ahu. I have many, many family who are Hawaiian that have been on the islands for multiple generations. Having grown up in Waikīkī as a child in the 50s and taking my little bamboo mat out on the beach and laying there and watching the elderly do their Tai Chi was something that was very important to me. Today I go there and it’s bumper to bumper traffic, I can’t even get 15 miles without being tied up in an area that I don’t really want to be; I want to get to where I’m going. I hate to see this island turn into O‘ahu. I think what makes this island so beautiful is the way it is today, and I think it needs to be cleaned up, made more beautiful, but not necessarily turned into a big resort side of the island. This island has a lot to offer. Banyan Drive, specifically the proposals that you all are showing on your maps, if you have an opportunity to drive down Banyan Drive, I encourage you to do so. My uncle has taken it upon himself to get into the banyan tree that entrances our hotel and has cleaned out all of the overgrowth that was in it. You can now see through the banyan tree, you can see the beautiful blue skies, the branches extend out and it looks gorgeous. It took very little effort on his part to get that done; it was done in, I think, a day and a half. And we have a wonderful arborist who is willing to get in there and do that to the rest of the trees. We have talked about getting together a non-profit organization to possibly do that for the trees on that drive, but I want to reiterate what my uncle has said about making a walk that the tourists can walk along that place. When they come to our hotel they say, ‘Where can I walk to eat?’ ‘Where can I walk to see something’ and they’re limited to one side of the road. So if they could have a walk to all of the Banyan Drive, see Amelia Earhart, see Babe Ruth, see all those trees, King George, there are so many trees that people don’t even know exist there. I would like to see that cleaned up. So I just wanted to make that really brief and I also wanted to reiterate the fact that when I go holoholo, I look for a beach and a hotel that I can see the ocean, and it is very important to tourists. They call and they Page 4 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes