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various agencies, such as Fish and Wildlife, State Historic Preservation Division, National Park
<br />Service, Nā Ala Hele, about how to minimize impacts to cultural, historic and natural resources.
<br />And many of these agency recommendations could be included as conditions, if the Commission
<br />were to approve these permits. However, there are a few unresolved issues that need additional
<br />consideration, so we are just kind of going to bring that out to you, and hopefully, have a
<br />discussion about how some of these issues can be resolved.
<br />
<br />One of the main issues is zoning density. There’s several resources on the property, and so the
<br />question is, based on the amount of development the applicant is proposing, is there enough
<br />developable area on the property to accommodate both the proposed development and protect the
<br />natural, cultural and historic resources on the property? And so that’s the first question: Can the
<br />property accommodate a 44-unit resort development given the resources on the property and the
<br />need to provide adequate on-site parking, or alternative off-site parking so that the public beach
<br />parking lot is not used for commercial purposes? The existing Lava Lava Beach Club restaurant
<br />does not have adequate on-site parking. They do have the amount required by the Zoning Code,
<br />so they do meet Zoning Code requirements, but it still isn’t adequate. And I’m sure you’ve seen
<br />from a lot of the public testimony that that’s one of the biggest concerns we are hearing is there’s
<br />just not enough on-site parking. Customers have been using the public beach parking lot or the
<br />northeast portion of the property as overflow parking. So the applicant will be providing 55 new
<br />stalls as part of the 44-unit resort development. But what that would create is that would cause
<br />Lava Lava to not be able to use that parking area that they are using now as overflow parking.
<br />
<br />Another question is, will the proposed location of the pool and event garden between two historic
<br />trails have a negative effect on the cultural use of these trails? As I mentioned before, the property
<br />has cultural, historic, natural, recreational and scenic resources that require preservation buffers
<br />ranging in size from ten feet for some historic sites up to 100 feet for construction activities
<br />around green sea turtles. And just to show you this area that the question was just referring to, so
<br />these are the three historic trails here, one, two and then three. And so the applicant is proposing a
<br />pool, a little fitness center and an event garden between these two historic trails. State Historic
<br />Preservation Division did recommend, or did concur with the applicant’s preservation plan, which
<br />recommended 15-foot buffers around the trails, measured from the edge of the trail. And I just
<br />want to go over a few of the, of those preservation buffers that were recommended in the
<br />applicant’s preservation plan. So again, you have the historic trails here, one, two, three; those
<br />will have a 15-foot permanent preservation buffer. It should be noted that one of the trails, this
<br />trail here, was recently desecrated, and the applicant wrote to the Planning Department, informing
<br />them of that, and they intend to restore the trail back to its former condition. Other resources on
<br />the property that will have preservation buffers are: A cave complex here will have a ten-foot
<br />buffer; the ephemeral pond, the preservation plan recommended a ten-foot buffer; the anchialine
<br />pond, the small anchialine pond, the two petroglyph areas have I believe a ten-foot buffer as well.
<br />And then you’ll notice these green lines here, these are smaller trails, this is a network of smaller
<br />trails that connect to the larger main trails, and the preservation plan did not recommend
<br />preservation of those trails; however, some of the segments of those smaller trails will be
<br />preserved within the 15-foot buffers of the primary trails.
<br />
<br />So another question the Director would like to hear the Commission’s concerns are is related to
<br />the threatened green sea turtle. The turtle is not classified as endangered yet; it’s threatened. But
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