COM 0560.006 2002-2004 - Laserfiche WebLink

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To: HAWAII COUNTY COUNCIL MEMBERS Re: UNIVERSITY TERRACE DEVELOPMENT by WESTERN UNITED LIFE ASSURANCE COMPANY Please reject Western Life's request that you approve a Project District zoning for the 171.5 acres it intends to develop under the name of University Terrace. Western Life's request would have you, as a practical matter, approve its doing whatever it wants, wherever and whenever it wants. This development is a project that is designed to be ongoing for many years and will involve not only Western Life but the many sub- developers to whom it sells property for development. To allow a project of this scope, scale, and impact on community infrastructure to proceed without a constant public review of its consequences for the community would be to render the County's planning process meaningless. I'm sure you've received much input on the negative impacts of this development on traffic, drainage, schools, noise and neighboring residential areas' quality of life and property values. I urge you to take those concerns at least as seriously as the interests of the Developer. Surely the request for approval of a development of this size, in the middle of an established community which has limited resources and infrastructure, should suggest that the Developer has not adequately considered how disruptive and even damaging such a project can be. The fact that such anill-defined, open-ended, and therefore unknowable zoning permission can be granted does not mean it should be granted. If Big Island communities are going to be able to preserve that sense of space, time, and respect for others that has long made the Neighbor Islands special places, there must be an active sense of self- restraint exercised by all who live, work and develop here. Western Life has shown no active sense ofself-restraint in its request for Project District zoning. Instead, it speaks comfortingly of wanting to work with its neighbors while requesting 10-story apartment buildings within a few feet of single-family homes on small lots, 35 acres of commercial development, transient housing, and asking you and the community to believe that it can manage the consequences of inserting thousands of people and cars, and hundreds of homes into the middle of an already established neighborhood. Even such a modest concept as a buffer zone is met with concerns about who would have liability and responsibility and we aze given to understand that such a commitment is not easily given. How a development of this size, with so many unanswered questions, could meet with the approval of the Planning Commission and Planning Department is difficult to understand and disturbing in its implications for the future. The community now calls on you to exercise the self-restraint that has been missing in this process to date. Only you now stand in defense of both the letter and the spirit of the planning process; please reject Western Life's request for Project District zoning and require of it a more detailed, Comm. No. s~• Ref. To: Prew~tse PL Ref. Dote MAY 4 'I~r,4