2019-02-07 Hearing Transcript - Wailani Development Amend REZ 10-117

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or share with the, with the Commission in due time, but what I'd like to initially do is to kind of like explain like and for the benefit of the Commissioners, I think that Commission Ikeda is very familiar with who the Applicant is because he was on the Council at that point in time. But, you know, just wanted to let the Commission know who is Wailani, Wailani Development, LLC. And, normally, you would think like, you know, it's a developer, but Wailani LLC is basically like Dr. Peter Matsuura, his wife, and the rest of his family. You know, and it basically was his vision. You know, his office is Ka Waena Lapa`au. Every morning looking across the street and seeing this vacant property and wondering like how can that property be best used for the community. And, so the thought was he'd like to have like some sort of like a medical kind of activity, commercial activity because he knows, his family lives in that quadrant of Hilo, where I live as well. Commercial activities are kind of like underserved. Most of the major commercial areas are situated Downtown and in the Puainako area, but not in the, that quadrant. So, here you have like a physician, his family. They're not developers. But, they have a vision. They want to buy the property. They want to develop this property. So, they had to acquire the property, seek the entitlements, and then to develop the project, it's kind of like a tough assignment even if you're a developer, especially if you're looking at a property that's more than a 170 acres. So, what they did after the hui, the family hui, secured enough financing to acquire the property, then they hired, you know, different consultants to actually try to implement the project based on the entitlements that they received back in 2010. So, they hired engineers, they hired engineers to kind of look at the water situation, they paid the water commitment fee for $200, I mean $200 per unit, they had community meetings, and one of these community meetings kind of like ended up with what Commissioner Ikeda noted earlier that, you know, a lot of the residents didn't want to have this kind of connection. You know, road connection. But, I can understand at the same time, you know, what Director Yee is saying about the wisdom of connectivity. But, notwithstanding that, they started to do the project, they sought out potential tenants, and they had these tenants this close. One was a major local supermarket and the other one was a major pharmaceutical firm. So, they looked at the property. They said it's a great location. Then, but, they looked at the infrastructure cost, what they would have to pay, what the developer had to pay, and basically, they said—they just shook their head. They said we can't do it, it's too expensive, you know, based on all of these things. And, along the way, Dr. Matsuura and his hui finally realized that, you know, we can't do this. We need to have a developer who is very knowledgeable in this whole area. So, they have right now consulted with on a regular basis this major development company based on Maui, and they have been advising them all the way through as far as what needs to be done, and it's really based on the developer's input that all of the suggested amendments that's, that's now before you, have been proposed. I think finally before going on the extension itself, what I'd like to kind of like notice that these are local people. They're born and raised for the most part on this island. They have no intention of flipping the project. He wants to fulfill a vision. The project is large enough, however, that at, different portions of the project may be sold off and, you know, to respect the developer, but at the end of the day, it still has to be consistent with the master plan that was originally envisioned. EXHIBIT B 12