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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2019-03-27 BDHRA Minutes BANYAN DRIVE HAWAI‘I REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY COUNTY OF HAWAI‘I MINUTES March 27, 2019 The meeting of the Banyan Drive Hawaiʽi Redevelopment Agency was called to order at 2:04 p.m. in the County of Hawai‘i, Aupuni Center Conference Room, 101 Pauahi Street, Hilo, Hawai‘i, with Chairman Nathan Gaddis presiding. MEMBERS PRESENT: Nathan Gaddis (Chairman), Brian DeLima, K.T. Cannon-Eger MEMBERS ABSENT & EXCUSED: Elmer Gorospe and Barry Taniguchi ALSO PRESENT: Michael Yee (Planning Director), Amy Self (Deputy Corporation Counsel for the Agency), Alex Roy (Planner), Kim Tanaka (Secretary), Gordon Heit (DLNR Representative) A quorum was present with three members in attendance. STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC There were approximately 9 members of the public in attendance. At 2:05 p.m. Chairman Gaddis opened the floor to take statements from the public. GADDIS: Mr. Jon Bockrath. Hope I pronounced that correctly. BOCKRATH: Yes you did. GADDIS: Great. Go ahead. BOCKRATH: Hello, I’m Jon Bockrath, owner of Ali‘i Ice Company, 21 Banyan Drive. First I’d like to thank the board for finally placing the issue of privately-owned parcels on the Banyan Drive peninsula on today’s agenda. Thank you. I believe there’s representation of three of the five privately held parcels. I expected one more, but I don’t see him here. Anyhow, there’s three of us here within the area that hold privately held parcels within the area of discussion here attending this meeting today. At this point, I’d like to present two questions for consideration and discussion today. Should the privately held parcels be subject and scrutinized to the same standards and restrictions as the state-owned and DLNR controlled parcels; that’s one question. The second question would be, would it be possible to in some manner or form move forward, fast track so to speak with the rezoning of the privately held parcels per the adopted and approved scenario one vote on and approved of per the Planning Department in October of 2016. That’s the second question. Please consider the fact that the Restaurant Nihon, currently Hilo Bay Hotel, or Hilo Bay Café was somehow ramrodded through Planning with the assistance of the state, the county, and a wealthy developer in 1983. Seventeen years after the open zone was Page 1 of 9 Banyan Drive Hawaiʽi Redevelopment Agency March 27, 2019 Minutes designated. That particular parcel of land is not even privately held. Once again, thank you for your effort and thank you for my three minutes. Aloha. CANNON-EGER: Mr. Chair? GADDIS: Yeah, go ahead. CANNON-EGER: Mr. Bockrath, if you would please, I have a question for you regarding your question number two. BOCKRATH: Yes. CANNON-EGER: The voted, adopted, and approved scenario that I have in my hand is scenario two. BOCKRATH: That would be my mistake. I wasn’t sure which scenario it was, but in either case, they’re pretty much the same when it comes to the private held properties. CANNON-EGER: Thank you very much. BOCKRATH: Thank you. GADDIS: Before we move on, anyone, does Planning want to comment on his question, or can you guys add any feedback because I don’t have anything from our perspective on that. YEE: Michael Yee, Planning Department. As for number one, the question regarding how should they be treated comparatively to other developers. You know I don’t have a quick answer to that except to say, you know, we treat everybody the same for the most part so I’m not sure what, what’s being eluded there. If, so I’m not sure exactly in detail what the question was. I will say on question two regarding the conceptual plan, I, my comment would be I think there was every intention that that scenario that was selected was meant to take, was the conceptual plan to be able to go to an EIS, and so that—where you devolve further alternatives. So the idea, I think, of wanting to solidify what was really a conceptual plan would be a little difficult. I don’t think that was the intention of it; was a, was a starting point for further discussion. So I’d want to refrain from saying, “hey this, this plan was adopted in 2016 and we should follow it.” So just a little precaution there. GADDIS: So is there any feedback we can give him at the moment as far as things he can do to jumpstart his process or, you know, speed things up for himself? Outside of BDHRA? YEE: Well, so just like any other landowner, if he has an application wants to make he just comes into Planning and, and talks to us and submits for whatever he’s interested in. GADDIS: Go ahead Brian. Page 2 of 9 Banyan Drive Hawaiʽi Redevelopment Agency March 27, 2019 Minutes DELIMA: Well, I know that we had a discussion, but and it’s actually the next agenda item anyway so, I think the problem for Mr. Bockrath is that the General Plan designates the area as open, and because it designates the area as open, I think the county has always considered the use of the ice house as a nonconforming use. The problem is, if you’re a private landowner and the zoning is declared to be open, then the landowner doesn’t have a reasonable use of his land except you can consider the, the consideration of the fact that he has been allowed to continue to operate as a ice house. Now from the public’s perspective, and I think the reason why the Redevelopment Agency thought that the zoning of the existing use would be to amend the General Plan so he as a landowner can have a more reasonable economic interest in developing the parcel to the point that it is not deteriorating because of the inability to get financial investment because of the designation of the open zoning and the nonconforming use. So from the Redevelopment Agency’s perspective, we wanted the landowners to be able to have, the private landowners, to be able to have a fair opportunity to utilize their private lands without the county having to necessarily compensate them for the continued designation of open. So from, you know, from this perspective of Mr. Bockrath’s property just to give an example, the thought, the thoughts has always been if you’re not going to, you know, pay for the, pay for the open designation then you need to allow him to be able to protect his property by giving him reasonable use of the property. And reasonable use of the property would be not to increase the density of that particular parcel, but perhaps make it commercial usage, or the state should consider trading land that would allow Mr. Bockrath to have a reasonable commercial parcel of property somewhere in the Hilo designation that approximates the value of his parcel and then the county would have, or state, would have an additional piece of property next to the Lili‘uokalani Park. So these are tradeoffs and valuations that need to occur. Now the other private landowners have different, different interests and different scenarios. For example, the parcel that’s next to the Naniloa parcel, owned by a family trust, that designation I believe is not open, but that designation is I believe in the hotel designation area. The parcel owned by Helco is, the parcel owned by Helco is open as well. Looks like it’s open too. And then the question is, you know, Helco has been, has abandoned that, that parcel for energy generation but you know, what is the best use of that particular parcel that is complementary to that Banyan Drive plan. And then the other thought was, you know, we, anyway, there was a lot of different discussions. But the bottom line is I think there really needs to be moving along of the—it’s not fair to the property owner to have an open designation for as long as it’s been without compensating him and allowing the—I mean the ice house has serves a valuable purpose for economic interest and Mr. Bockrath, to be frank, he has generated other ice producing facilities elsewhere, but you know, there comes a time where we need to treat, as Mr. Yee says, everybody fairly. And it’s not fair to Mr. Bockrath to sit on a piece of property without the inability, without the ability to even maintain what is existing right now. So with the present open, open zone, open General Plan designation, it really handcuffs his ability to get financing to do what other property owners in Hilo are able to do. So, so I, I identify with his plight and I previously represented Mr. Bockrath. I made disclosure. I do not represent him on this matter. I represented the previous landowner prior to Mr. Bockrath, who has since deceased. So I have no interest, but I wanted to, for full disclosure and transparency, indicate that on the record. Thank you. CANNON-EGER: Mr. Chairman, if you don’t mind. I’d just like to pose a question. I think most of my question may have been answered by posting this graphic, thank you. But my question relates to Suisan, the power plant, and the ice house, all of which are in excess of a Page 3 of 9 Banyan Drive Hawaiʽi Redevelopment Agency March 27, 2019 Minutes hundred years old. So it seems to me they pre-date the zoning and I wondered if these enterprises weren’t grandfathered into the zoning considerations. It appears from that graphic that Ali‘i Ice and the original Helco power plant, now on standby, and known as the Shipman power plant are both in open. No consideration for commercial use there? Or for industrial use as is true for the Suisan property? YEE: So as Mr. DeLima had said, in more plain speak, so if, if he has a nonconforming use with ice house, basically we say he can continue as a ice house. If he moves outside of that, then its, you’re not conforming anymore. So that’s kind of the, the question at hand is, what can he do, you know, that’s what Brian’s kinda asked. What can he do besides just an ice house that would still be within zoning to do, because we’re basically saying now if you stop doing an ice house, you can’t do anything anymore because it’s in open space. And that’s the quandary that, that we’re kind of stuck in right now. So, yeah, so basically they’re in open, in open with a nonconforming use if he continue. I’m not sure if that exactly answered your question. CANNON-EGER: Not exactly, but I’ll let it go. YEE: Well no, I want us to be clear here that that as long as he continues, for now as it stands, as long as he continues to operate as the ice house, traditionally what’s been happening, it’s fine because he’s in a nonconforming situation. We basically, when you stop doing that, you lose that nonconforming use. Or if he tried to come in and say I wanna do something different, we’re gonna say no because we don’t want this use here anymore. Right, so that that’s kind of where we’re in, what Brian was trying to say was are there things within a certain amount, is there wiggle room outside of the ice house that the owner, property owner could do, is there something within the wiggle room of Helco’s property that they can do. And it doesn’t have to be that precise thing that they used to do. CANNON-EGER: Traditionally, and I’m talking a hundred years ago okay, having a, an ice house and a power plant also meant that you had soda bottling and cold storage. Those were business that went right together. If you had a power house, you had an ice house, you had soda bottling, you had cold storage. All of these were businesses that went hand-in-hand making use of the product that one produced for another purpose. I really don’t see why the, why they were put in open instead of maintaining an industrial, limited industrial category. Thank you. GADDIS: Alright, well, I think we’ll go ahead and hear from second member of the public, Garth Yamanaka. If you can come up. YAMANAKA: Good afternoon. Garth Yamanaka, Yamanaka Enterprises. We manage and represent the ownership at the Hilo Ironworks, kind of in the same situation as described by Mr. DeLima here. We were, we’re zoned open now, the General Plan LUPAG we’re also open, but within the land use section of the General Plan we are designated for industrial. But, you know, we are, because we don’t have a zoning, we are considered nonconforming uses at this point and I’ll just, wanted to emphasize that it does make it very difficult with our tenants. Makes it difficult to finance or if we decide we want to sell the property, that’s where it really becomes very difficult. So I just wanted to ask that you consider us in your discussions or in your thoughts Page 4 of 9 Banyan Drive Hawaiʽi Redevelopment Agency March 27, 2019 Minutes when considering uses moving forward. We’re kind of on the outskirts of the boundaries, but we are part of it so. That’s all I was going to say. GADDIS: Yeah, thank you very much. Alright well, we can move on to business of the agency. BUSINESS OF AGENCY The Agency took this item up at 2:20 p.m. with approximately 9 members of the public in attendance. 1. Review and discussion regarding bills of the 2019 legislative session that involve or pertain to properties within the Banyan Drive redevelopment area. At this time, Mr. Alex Roy provided an update to the four bills of the legislative session. ROY: The first one we’re going to talk about is pretty quick. This is the one that appropriated six million dollars to demolish Uncle Billy’s. It doesn’t appear to be moving. I don’t think it’s any longer in process. There was some discussion off-handed that it’s kind of folded into other potential bills relating to leases where leaseholders would be provided reductions in their leases to do demolition, so, but at this time I think SB1142 is no longer. DELIMA: Can I? I know the bill is no longer, but in terms of the conference finance budget reports, is it on any, sorry, is the appropriations on any of the conference committee recommendations for funding under DLNR? ROY: I’d have to check on that. DELIMA: Yeah, cause sometimes they don’t, they use the bills as a tool for, a vehicle, I guess they use the term, a vehicle for identifying projects but once they have identified the amount of money then each of the Ways and Means and the House Finance Committee then determines whether they gonna fold it into the budget. So just because the bill has not moved doesn’t mean the appropriation per se is dead. ROY: Yeah. Yep. House Bill 910, this is the one that directed the State Office of Planning to conduct infrastructure, the studies, on Banyan Drive. It, there has, there was no changes. It passed at second reading as amended for the senate draft one and it’s referred to the Ways and Means, but again no changes so it’s still being pushed forth and that would include studies that would allow us to also hopefully do the EIS along with. But again, this is under the Office of Planning to direct those infrastructure studies and studies. They were against it to remind you guys, OP was pretty adamantly against it because they feel like they haven’t been part of this in the past and they thought they weren’t really the agency to actually pursue this. It’d be more so either the county or DLNR. Senate Bill 914. This is the one that required DLNR to allocate ten percent of the revenue collected within the redevelopment area to the BDHRA. It does allow kind of specific monies for conducting Chapter 343, the EIS that we’re all kind of hoping to get. You know, with the idea Page 5 of 9 Banyan Drive Hawaiʽi Redevelopment Agency March 27, 2019 Minutes that it’s, you know, necessary to complete the agency’s redevelopment plan. But unfortunately, no funds will be made until the county has to pony up the same $250 thousand for both fiscal year 2019-2020, and 2020-2021. So this passed the second reading as amended and does refer to the finance. There was no major changes on this one. This is the big one here, House Bill 1219. This designates redevelopment districts for any area of public lands so it’s a pretty general bill for the entire state. But within that, it designated the Waiākea Peninsula Redevelopment District. So that was specifically stated in the bill. One of the changes I noted, it designates the Planning Committee and changes that committee from a policy-making committee to an executive committee. So that’s kind of a big change. So if that, that gives the committee a little more power. So in this case the Waiākea Peninsula Redevelopment District Planning Committee would be formed and they would be following through under this bill’s requirements. Some of the other changes, they said it’s set some of the committee member choice parameters like not only will you have numbers from this island, it asks that three members be from a neighbor county, most likely O‘ahu. It sets conditions for the peninsula redevelopment district boundaries. A lot of this we knew already, but it just reset them in the bill. And then again this designates 50 percent of the revenue from public lands to the revolving fund for the Planning Committee, so it’s quite a bit. A new section was added to development of public lands and the redevelopment area. So the local redevelopment agency created and approved under this, this bill, may negotiate development agreements with developers. So it gives you a little more power to renegotiate some of those agreements as long as they follow the plan that was set forth by that committee. So the report was adopted, it passed second reading as amended and was referred to Ways and Means. I’d like to read, if you permit me here, a report I think this was Senate, the Senate report on this bill, and, just so everybody’s clear. It said, “Your committee finds that the state has a fiduciary duty to manage state lands in the best interests of the public by enhancing state revenues and promoting the social environmental and economic well being. The Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Authority, while well-intentioned, has been unable to accomplish it’s mandate to redevelop state lands on Banyan Drive. This measure, 1219 would replace the Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Authority with a new authority to allow for state funding and control of public lands and help support crucial economic growth and development in the Hilo area.” So I’m not sure what that means for all of us, but if this bill is passed it could mean some changes. A side note too, the bill, the ten percent and the fifty percent bill here, so 1219 and this previous 914, it’s not clear if both of these would be going through. And so, because that would be ten plus fifty, sixty percent. So it appears that hopefully one or the other would go through, either 1219 or 914, but it doesn’t seem that both would go through. But that’s just an assumption. So, nd that’s all I had for the bills right now and this was as of the 22, I checked just before the meeting. There was nothing new, no new reports, no new statements, and so now we’re just in a waiting game. So do you guys have any questions? GADDIS: Anybody have any questions on current legislative status? If not we can go ahead and move on to the next agenda item, which we’ve touched on already, by the way, in our statements from the public. Page 6 of 9 Banyan Drive Hawaiʽi Redevelopment Agency March 27, 2019 Minutes 2. Open discussion regarding current uses on private property within the Banyan Drive Redevelopment Area. This agenda item is for information and discussion purposes only. The Agency took this item up at 2:29 p.m. with approximately 9 members of the public in attendance. GADDIS: For those that are here that are not usually here, we don’t have any actual authority to make any decisions, or changes, etcetera currently in the Banyan Drive Redevelopment Agency. Our mandate was originally to get an environmental impact statement done for the peninsula which would then allow us to go on to further planning, sort of a General Plan of sorts, which would give us a little bit more meat on the bone to be able to make potential changes. And so we’re sort of, we’ve been in a holding pattern for months and over a year now, which is why this potential funding to fund the EIS is so critical and that’s what’s moving through the legislative session right now. So, with that, does anyone have anything they want to add, or questions or point to be made? DELIMA: I do. GADDIS: Yeah, go ahead Brian. DELIMA: I appreciate the legislative update and I think it’s clear that without the funding nothing is gonna move and most of the land is state land so, you know, my understanding is that House Bill 1219 senate draft 1 has a better chance of becoming law than the Senate Bill and, and I think that in a way that would at least generate some impetus as to what would be the reality that most of those lands are state lands on the state leases, and something gotta be done sooner rather than later. And I think our Chair has kind of put into a good summary of the reality that the agency would only be empowered to do what is necessary once all the necessary EISs become adopted. The state would still have control because of their, their DLNR authority over state leases. So even if we got the EISs to be completed, our responsibility for effectuating specific zoning, or planning approval, or public work variances and so on may have gone to the agency under that scenario, except how it really interplayed with state land leases is unclear. Even if the House Bill 1219 is adopted, doesn’t, is there room for the board should that be repealed as well? I think that’s a question that needs to be asked by, asked of the County Council. Because you could still have some role in terms of the agency as it pertains to the private use of lands, the private lands that are in that particular area. So, you know, some authority could, so that from the open zoning if you’re going to approve commercial zoning it may require approval of the agency in order to make sure it’s consistent with the adjacent uses, uses of land, you know, that could be a possibility. If you’re going to have commercial on the, commercial, other commercial properties elsewhere or for example the Yamanaka property that they were speaking of. You know, that could be some type of, instead of going to the Planning Commission, the agency could take that responsibility, perhaps. I am more concerned about the, and I want to articulate it more in terms of understanding the economic impact that it is having on landowners, and its impact on terms of the business community and economic generation in our community. We don’t have a lot of capital Page 7 of 9 Banyan Drive Hawaiʽi Redevelopment Agency March 27, 2019 Minutes investment that is readily, that we could foresee in the near future. In fact Hawai‘i is capital poor. Most of our capital investment comes from outside the State of Hawai‘i. A lot of times it’s outside of our, the country of the United States. A lot of time we have a lot of investments from Canada that invest in Hawai‘i. So when we have local landowners of property that other businesses are utilizing, its, it behooves government to facilitate the economic viability of those businesses, rather to make, rather than making it more difficult because time is money. The more delay we have in terms of, and I’ve said this in all due respect to our Planning Commission, I’ve said it before he became the Planning Director, I said when the first, last Planning Director was on board is that we need to move more quickly with our General Plan amendments because by not moving more quickly on our General Plan amendments, we’re stifling our local landowners who are, who have had investment in that particular community for a long time. Because Banyan Drive area could have some economic generation for, or at least have an opportunity for these landowners to sell their parcels, or trade their parcels, or at least utilize their parcels in a way that make sense long-term for their tenants as well as for them. So I support any effort to try to facilitate and change the designation from open to something that makes sense. I leave it to the professional planners to determine what could be something that makes more sense for those particular uses. Or at least have a discussion with the state if we are not going to change it to open, to maybe consider transferring or exchanging parcels cause there are some state lands outside of this area that could be used for other designations other than open. So that’s my input in terms of where we’re at. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. GADDIS: Anyone else have any statements on this agenda item? Alright, if not, we’ll wrap that up. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS The Agency took this item up at 2:36 p.m. 1. Approval of minutes from the February 27, 2019, Banyan Drive Hawaiʻi Redevelopment Agency meeting. GADDIS: We’ll move onto our Administrative Matters, which basically are just the approval of minutes from the last meeting, February 27, 2019. I don’t know if everyone’s had a chance to review them, but if someone wants to make a motion to approve. DELIMA: Move to approve as circulated. GADDIS: Alright, we need a second. CANNON-EGER: Second. GADDIS: We’ll take a vote to approve minutes from February 27, 2019. All in favor say aye. ALL: Aye. GADDIS: Alright, motion is passed. Page 8 of 9 Banyan Drive Hawaiʽi Redevelopment Agency March 27, 2019 Minutes ANNOUNCEMENTS The Agency took this item up at 2:36 p.m. 1. Next meeting tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, April 24, 2019, at the Aupuni Center Conference Room. GADDIS: That concludes our meeting. The next one is scheduled currently for Wednesday, April 24, here, same place. Thanks everybody for coming. Meeting adjourned at 2:36 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Kim Tanaka, Secretary A T T E S T : Nathan Gaddis, Chairman Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency Page 9 of 9 Banyan Drive Hawaiʽi Redevelopment Agency March 27, 2019 Minutes