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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007-02-02 TBIG ISLE PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAI‘I HEARING TRANSCRIPT FEBRUARY 2, 2007 BIG ISLE VENTURES, LLC A regularly advertised hearing on the application of (REZ 06-000054) was called to order at 10:08 a.m.in the County of Hawaii, Aupuni Center Conference Room, 101 Pauahi Street, Hilo, Hawaii with Chairman William R. Graham presiding. William R. GrahamKimo Alameda PRESENT: ABSENT & EXCUSED: C. Fred Galdones Andrew Iwashita Alvin Rho Jeffrey McCall QdmdlRhq`btr` Rodney Watanabe Ivan Torigoe, Deputy Corporation Counsel Christopher J. Yuen, Planning Director Phyllis Fujimoto, Staff Planner Jeff Darrow, Staff Planner And approximately 7 people from the public in attendance. APPLICANT: BIG ISLE VENTURES, LLC (REZ06-000054) Change of Zone from a Single-Family Residential – 7,500 square foot (RS-7.5) to a Village Commercial – 7,500 square foot (CV) district for 17,382 square feet of land. The property is located at the northeast corner of the Highway 11 (Mamalahoa Highway) and Kukui Road rd intersection, across from the Naalehu Park, Naalehu Subdivision 3 Series, Poupouwela and Kawala, Ka’u, Hawaii, TMK: 9-5-24:8. GRAHAM:Our second agenda item is Applicant: Big Isle Ventures. This is a change of zone application, so we’ll be only giving a recommendation to the County Council. The change of zone is from Single-Family Residential to a Village Commercial in the Naalehu area. It’s for 17,382 square feet of land on the corner of the Highway 11 (Mamalahoa Highway) and Kukui Road. Jeff? DARROW: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I can direct the Commissioners’ attention to our location map, the area of this application is within the Kau district of Hawaii. More specifically, we are looking at Naalehu town. Running in an east-west direction, we have Mamalahoa Highway that runs directly through the town. This way would be towards Pahala town towards the east, and towards the west we would be going towards the Ocean View area. EXHIBIT B 1 Just for reference, this particular area identified in yellow is where Naalehu School is, this area in green is Naalehu Park, if you’re familiar with those areas within Naalehu town. This area identified in a light purple which is Commercial zoning is the gas station that’s within Naalehu town. Directly across the street we have the area of the application identified in red. This is on the corner of Mamalahoa Highway and Kukui Road. The applicant in this case, Big Isle Ventures LLC is requesting a change of zone from RS-7.5 to CV-7.5.This is for a parcel that is 17,382 square feet in size. Looking at the plot plan submitted by the applicants, there are two existing structures on site identified in yellow. We have an existing dwelling and a garage. Access is from Mamalahoa Highway. Condition to mention is Condition No. 5, I’m sorry, Condition D. Condition D states that the commercial development shall utilize the existing dwelling. Renovations and improvements which are generally consistent with the current appearance of the existing home shall be allowed. The applicant is requesting the change of zone so that they can operate office-type uses within the existing dwelling. The Planning Director is recommending that the Planning Commission forward a favorable recommendation to the Hawaii County Council. Are there any questions? GRAHAM: Commissioners? Commissioner Watanabe. WATANABE: I have a question for the Director. I can appreciate your line of reasoning for having Condition D. And I’m just wondering, you know, once we do have the change of zoning the zoning runs with the land. Are there enough controls within say the building permit process, etc. that highway access or access to the property, you know, can be controlled, if somebody else buys this facility and then decides to raze it and produce something else. And the reason I brought that up is the State obviously had some concerns about access to the highway, and the Department of Public Works had made recommendations on access through Kukui Road. And I was wondering if we should have a condition that would force them to provide access through Kukui Road in the event that a new building was established. I don’t really care as long as there are sufficient controls in that area. I’m not sure if you fully understand what I’m saying. YUEN: No, I know exactly what you’re saying. As far as the question of controls, once this is, in a Commercial zone any new building construction and even renovations require plan approval, except for a single family dwelling. Because you can build a single family dwelling in a Commercial zone. So at that point staff looking at the, and the plan approval is something that precedes the building permit. So you come in for plan approval, then after plan approval you get the building permit. So staff is supposed to look at conditions of the change of zone in doing the plan approval. So if they, you know, wanted to do, changed their mind and want to make a 7-Eleven there or a gas station, staff is supposed to look at it and say, no, that’s not consistent with conditions of the change of zone; and they would catch it there. Just to explain this a little bit, and we’ve been doing more of these highly specific zoning conditions. I think we did one like this in Waiakea Houselots. It’s a philosophical shift from the normal practice of zoning. The theory of zoning typically is that, well, you’re going to rezone something, the applicant may have a particular use in mind, but once you rezone it to say a EXHIBIT B 2 commercial use that they can do anything that’s permitted in the Commercial District. You put all the conditions in necessary to encompass whatever might happen under that commercial zoning. So they can change their plans and do something else, and do whatever. That’s sort of a textbook idea of zoning My feeling from having been, from six years of working in the Planning Department, listening to people in the community, hearing the Commission, the Council, applicants is this -- that when you walk down that road very often you’re in a situation where you’re really not comfortable with the worst case scenario or full buildout scenario, yet the person who is applying has a very specific idea in mind that is just fine. So you’re in a position of having to turn down the applicant, who wants in this case, for example, to convert a very nice existing home into an office, because you are concerned maybe it would be 7-Eleven or a gas station. And you’re not really happy with that prospect, maybe you are, maybe not. But you have to go through that analysis. So, given that, I personally made a little philosophical shift here in that I am comfortable with having these kinds of very specific recommendations -- not that this should be the rule, not that this should be the normal way of doing things. But where we have something that is presented that is pretty specific from the applicant, pretty limited like this one where although there is some commercial zoning what is still pretty residential as an area, that they can look at having these very limited and specific kinds of zoning conditions. GRAHAM: Commissioner Watanabe? WATANABE: Yeah, as a follow-up then I take that to mean you feel comfortable that we can enforce this even in spite of the classical thinking of how we change zoning. So I take it you’re comfortable with the way it is written now. YUEN: Right. You have to, and that’s where findings come into play because every condition of zoning has these findings that they’re necessary for public welfare, etc. As a matter of legality you will find older court cases that are stricter and say that you can’t put, that zoning should be one size fits all and that you cannot put a lot of conditions on zoning. I think by far the majority of modern court cases are much more flexible on this and uphold reasonable conditions attached to zoning ordinances. GRAHAM: Thank you, Mr. Yuen. Commissioner Siracusa. SIRACUSA: Yes. In Condition B where we’re talking about landscaping according to Rule 17, and I looked at the photographs and it looks to me like the property is nicely landscaped already. So I’m wondering if anyone looked at that existing landscaping vis-a-vis what would have to be changed to accommodate Rule 17. Is the existing landscaping better than Rule 17 or would Rule 17 be better than the existing landscaping? I don’t know if maybe Jeff went and looked at the property. And if so, did you look at it thinking about Rule 17? GRAHAM: Go ahead, Jeff. DARROW: Unfortunately being part of the Planning Commission there are other divisions within our Department that works specifically on plan approval and landscaping EXHIBIT B 3 conditions. So as far as how they would treat that I have no idea. I would believe that as long at it meets the criteria for the landscaping requirements that it should be okay even if it’s existing. If it doesn’t meet those requirements then it should be brought up to that standard. If it surpasses then it should be okay. SIRACUSA: What I’m concerned about especially is I see there are very nice mature trees on the property and I would hate to see them come down in order to accommodate some rule on paper that, you know, I mean, there might be an inflexibility there. And maybe the Director could address that question. GRAHAM: Mr. Yuen, do you think that’s an issue we need to concern ourselves with here today? YUEN: Well, I can just read what the Rule would require. First, looking on the right-hand side, because the adjacent property is zoned CV there isn’t any landscaping requirement between those two lots. On the back side, on the top of the drawing there, because that was an RS zone, that would require an opaque landscaped buffer from the ground to 3 feet high with intermitted visual screening from the opaque portion to a height of at least 20 feet. And maturity, the portion of intermittent visual screening should not contain any completely unobstructed openings less than 10 feet wide. There are several ways you can do this. One is small trees 20 feet tall at maturity planted 30 feet on center with a 3-foot high solid fence or wall. You can also do shrubbery with trees. So for the back side a mix of trees and shrubbery would , satisfy. Now then you have a front yard requirement, let’s see10-foot wide landscaped strip with a minimum of 1 tree and 10 shrubs per 35 feet of frontage, excluding highway openings. And then where plantings would result in an inappropriate or impractical design due to underground utilities, overhead wires, or other factors, 5 shrubs may be substitute for 1 tree. So, and I think this being a corner there are two fronts. Both the Kukui and Mamalahoa would both . be considered fronts I’m not familiar certainly enough with the property to tell you whether the existing landscaping complies with Rule 17. SIRACUSA: A lot of times when we get these applications we’ll see a plot plan and it will show where the existing or proposed vegetation is going to be; and here it’s hard to tell. I mean even the photographs, we don’t have any photographs of the back of the parcel to see if there is already something there, you know, that would meet with the Rule 17 or not. And without a plan to show what we have in place, it’s hard to determine if Rule 17 would be an improvement or a step down. GRAHAM: Ms. Siracusa? We’ll get the applicant here in just a minute; and probably if there are any specific issues we can chase them right down at that time, I think. YUEN: We can ask the applicant. I’d be okay with varying the requirement for Rule 17 because we are making them simply keep the home which -. So the basic appearance of the site will still be that of a single-family home. And I think we may have done this before where you’re keeping a home in the area. The idea behind these landscaping requirement, see, part of it is for parking lots but also partly to give some screening and greenery for your typical EXHIBIT B 4 kind of commercial building. There are no landscaping requirements in single family residential areas. SIRACUSA: Thank you. That was my concern. GRAHAM: Thank you. Any other questions of Jeff before we bring the applicant up? I’d also like to indicate that I don’t have anyone signed up for public testimony. So if anyone here would like to give public testimony, please let Sharon know. Okay, will the applicant come forward, please. Could I swear you all in first. Raise your right hand please. Do you swear or affirm to tell the Planning Commission today the truth regarding this matter? TESTIFIERS: I do. GRAHAM: Thank you. You may give your name and address; and go ahead with your testimony, please. LIM: Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members of the Commission. Steven Lim from Carlsmith representing Big Isle Ventures LLC. And we would note that perhaps some of the correspondence should be corrected to Big Isle Ventures when it moves up to the next step, hopefully. With me to my left is Mr. Chris Manfredi from Big Isle Ventures LLC who’s one of the principals. MANFREDI: Good morning, Commissioners. Chris Manfredi, my address is PO Box 1109, Naalehu, Hawaii 96772. LIM: We’ve received and reviewed the Planning Director’s background report, and recommendation, and the proposed conditions of approval; and we concur with those documents. I think just for two points of clarification, with regard to Condition D which requires that the renovations and improvements to the existing dwelling be consistent with the current appearance of the home shall be allowed, we discussed this with the Planning Director. And it’s our understanding that he would approve any renovations, or additions, or modifications to the existing home, so long as the end product had the current appearance of the existing home. And with that, we’d accept that condition. And the other clarification is that for Conditions I and J, those relate to affordable housing requirements if the applicant develops residential units on the property. And as we are not proposing the development of residential units we feel those don’t apply; however, we are willing to leave those just in case that happens in the future. Other than that we’d ask your support. I passed out some photos of the Mamalahoa frontage and the Kukui Road frontage that kind of shows at least most of those edges. I didn’t have a photo of the rear yard but, and it looks like there’s some small shrubs but not anything real significant. These homes have been there since the 1930s or so. We do want to maintain all of the large trees and plants that are there at this point in time. And we welcome the Director’s indication that he would grant a variance from any of the requirements of Rule 17 for landscaping that would enable us to keep those plants. Thank you. EXHIBIT B 5 GRAHAM: Do you have anything further, Mr. Manfredi? MANFREDI: I’m able to answer any questions that any of the Commissioners may have. GRAHAM: Commissioner Watanabe? WATANABE: I have a question for the Director. You did mention the variance and being comfortable with the variance because it really isn’t a commercial structure and the way the zoning change is worded they would not be allowed to create a commercial structure. How do you want to handle this Condition B. Do you want to actually eliminate the last sentence of landscaping or place additional wording allowing you to provide the variance there? YUEN: Well, you know, looking at their photographs it is very nicely landscaped and it would either meet the intent of Rule 17 or be very close. What I would say is I would change the condition to read as follows, just a second -. WATANABE: Cause I’m supposing that you could add back Rule 17 if they came in and said, oh, look, I changed my mind, I want to do a 7-Eleven because it would be all predicated on Condition B anyway. YUEN: Right. Well, they would have to modify that; and at that time the landscaping condition could be modified. But I would modify the last sentence of B to say that, “The applicant shall retain the existing landscaping or provide landscaping in accordance with the requirement of the Planning Department’s Rule 17.” And that way they can either retain what they’ve got or if they want to change it then they have to comply with Rule 17. GRAHAM: Okay? LIM: That’s acceptable to the applicant. GRAHAM: Any other questions from Commissioners? Commissioner Rho? RHO: I do. You know, on your photograph, I guess my question is whether or not the driveway that’s shown is used only by that residence. MANFREDI: The driveway is a shared driveway. There’s parking along that driveway. And we’ll submit a more comprehensive parking plan within a year. But -. RHO: So the driveway is shared with the property owner on the right as you face your building? MANFREDI: Yeah, with the adjacent property. That’s a gift shop, yeah. EXHIBIT B 6 RHO: Cause I noticed that there was a discussion between yourself or your representative and the Department of Transportation about possibly putting an entrance onto the roadway adjacent to your property, the roadway going ocean to mountain; and there was a reply from you folks that it really wasn’t feasible because it wouldn’t meet the County standard or -. MANFREDI: There is an existing roadway and parking area that enters Highway 11 here and goes all the way back to, there’s a buffer zone from these lots in the back. This by the way is the proposed sewer site for Naalehu. But this is a paved driveway which is shared by both of these, this being a residential, the existing lot and this is a commercial establishment that exists now. RHO: And that driveway is shown in the picture? Is that we see in the picture? MANFREDI: Yeah, it’s shown as AC pavement. RHO: Well, I assume that this is asphalt. But is this the driveway that’s shared by the two, right? MANFREDI: Yes. GRAHAM: Are you clear, Commissioner Rho, or do we have further questions of the applicant here, or -? RHO: Well, I guess I really would like, I mean, I know what your position is. Do you want to add to your position about the driveway and the roadway leading into Mamalahoa versus the State Department of Transportation people saying that you folks should consider doing an entrance on the side road or from the side road, especially when I read through the material I didn’t know that that driveway was shared. So when I looked at the picture, I see that commercial sign which made me go back through all the material again to find out what the zoning was for the neighborhood and the parcel next door, which would be consistent, which is what you guys are asking for. So my next question to myself was whether or not that was a shared driveway since that sign is so close to the driveway. LIM: That is a shared driveway. There are two side-by-side access easements. RHO: So I just wonder whether or not the State Transportation people know that that’s a shared driveway and whether or not that makes any difference or whatever, but -. LIM: The two access easements show up side by side on the tax map so I’m assuming they know. The position that we took is that if they tried to move the driveway around to what’s called Kukui Road side we probably wouldn’t be able to meet the County’s setback requirement for driveway from the intersection of 75 feet; and what that would also do is it would basically require us to tear up the whole wall and all the trees. EXHIBIT B 7 GRAHAM: Commissioner Rho, just on your issue like on the conditions of approval, C says access to the property from Highway 11 shall meet with the approval of the DOT. Yet there is some issue with the Department of Transportation you were saying, right? RHO: Well, it just concerned me that they brought that issue up and there is a response, but then I just noticed that it was basically a shared driveway. I’m not sure where that leads him, but I just wanted to point that out and get a comment from the applicant. GRAHAM: Are you following this closely, Mr. Yuen? YUEN: Well, I understand what he’s saying. I don’t want to take the condition out, simple. I think that has been a pretty standard condition. I think that they need to have a discussion themselves with the Department of Transportation emphasizing that the development is limited to the existing home and that perhaps the Department of Transportation will then not regard this as something that creates an issue for them, given that you have an existing access driveway that does serve a number of homes. As a practical matter, there’s no question of closing the driveway which would be more an attractive proposition from both, probably from the Department of Transportation’s point of view. You’d be in a position where the driveway would still be there, you would force them to create another driveway, you would have a condition that they could only use the Kukui Road driveway. On the other hand there would be other people using the existing driveway. So it’s a little, unless there’s some kind of physical barrier that then also prevents people from using that driveway to access their commercial property which I think is hard because it’s probably laid out already that you use that driveway -. So that’s why, you know, I don’t see us putting a condition in now that they must use Kukui Road. On the other hand I cannot see taking the existing condition out that says they have to get approval from Department of Transportation. GRAHAM: Mr. Lim, you had a -? LIM: Our plan was to basically approach the Department of Transportation and indicate to them to what the proposed use is, which would be relatively, you know, low impact we think; and we don’t believe that we’re going to be required to implement any further driveway improvements. I mean this area of the Highway 11 at Mamalahoa Highway is, I believe the right-of-way is only something like 50 feet and the pavement maybe at 40. So at some point in time if the Department of Transportation desires to improve that roadway they’re going to need additional right-of-way. And the big question is going to be whether to take out those trees fronting this property and other properties along the roadway. So I think that big decision is going to be made some time after we’re all out of here. YUEN: What’s the speed limit there? LIM: It’s 35 at the long stretch and drops to 25 fronting the school. YUEN: And there is that neighboring CV property which does have a driveway access. EXHIBIT B 8 GRAHAM: Mr. Yuen, I noticed, you know, in the subsequent application before us today you’ve given an unfavorable recommendation because of off-street parking not being adequately available and all. And I’m presuming that we are assuming here that aside from using the driveway there will be an adequate amount of off-street parking provided. Does that all come about at plan approval time? YUEN: That’s taken care of at plan approval, and physically it looks like there’s enough space. I think the standard, is it, do you know if it was 1 to 300 square feet for an office building? What’s the square footage on the home? MANFREDI: It’s about 1700 square feet. YUEN: So they’d be looking at six spaces. It doesn’t take a lot of space. There’s a question you have to lay out the parking, there is room for it. So if it didn’t work out, then they’re either stuck or they’re in a position of asking for a variance from the parking requirements. GRAHAM: Right. And often in cases like this, we do have sort of specific parking kind of delineated for us at the time we deal with this application. But you don’t feel there’s anything necessary as far as conditions or as far as what we look at today that would ask for that? YUEN: Yeah, it’s better to have it; but there is clearly space for it. So I trust that they’ll be able to do it. And if they can’t, then they have a problem. But it doesn’t, you know, if we have an application that you see right off the bat that there’s a big problem, then we’re going to do a negative recommendation. And I know what you’re talking about. Typically we have seen in a site plan with a commercial building that lays out the parking, and often sometimes there are changes from that. We look at the approval of the, say, the change of zone does not necessarily approve the site plan because we actually as a Planning Department typically are not doing the full plan approval type review of their proposed site plan. And, in fact, we have seen site plans that weren’t going to pass. So, you know, it would be a better thing to have. But given that you’re looking at 6 stalls it doesn’t take a lot of space to accommodate that, and they do have space around the house to do it. GRAHAM: Thank you. Jeff? DARROW: Just to bring to your attention, too, there is an existing garage on site. So that’s probably two stalls right there. GRAHAM: All right. Thank you. Any other questions from Commissioners? Thank you both. We don’t have any public testimony, so I think you all can sit back now; and we’ll go into our deliberation. Commissioner Watanabe? WATANABE: I move a favorable recommendation be forwarded to the County Council regarding Change of Zone application (REZ 06-000054) with the following changes: Changing Big Island Ventures to Big Isle Ventures and also revising Condition B, the last sentence of which is to read, “The applicant shall retain the existing landscaping or provide landscaping in EXHIBIT B 9 accordance with the requirements of Planning Department's Rule No. 17 (Landscaping Requirements), Chapter 25 (Zoning Code), Hawaii County Code.” RHO: Second. GRAHAM: Thank you. We have a second from Commissioner Rho. Do we have any discussion on this motion? No discussion. Jeff, I guess you can take the vote. DARROW: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to confirm, the motion was seconded by Commissioner Rho? GRAHAM: Yes. DARROW: Okay. Commissioner Watanabe? WATANABE: Aye. DARROW: Commissioner Rho? RHO: Aye. DARROW: Commissioner Galdones? GALDONES: Aye. DARROW: Commissioner Siracusa? SIRACUSA: Aye. DARROW: And Mr. Chairman? GRAHAM: Aye. DARROW: The motion passes five to zero. GRAHAM: Thank you. You’ll be notified in writing. The discussion ended at 10:44 a.m. Respectfully submitted, Sharon M. Nomura, East Hawaii Secretary EXHIBIT B 10