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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007-07-20 TSEASCAPE PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAII HEARING TRANSCRIPT JULY 20, 2007 SEASCAPE DEVELOPMENT, LLC A regularly advertised hearing on the applications of (SLU 07-000014/REZ 07-000064) was called to order at 2:40 p.m. at the Waikoloa Beach - Marriott, Naupaka III, 69275 Waikoloa Drive, Waikoloa, Hawaii, with First-Vice Chairman C. Kimo Alameda presiding. PRESENT: C. Kimo Alameda ABSENT & EXCUSED: William Graham Takashi Domingo Alvin Rho Andrew Iwashita Rodney Watanabe Shelly Ogata Rene’ Siracusa Rell Woodward Ivan Torigoe, Deputy Corporation Counsel Brooks Bancroft, Deputy Corporation Counsel Chris Yuen, Planning Director Phyllis Fujimoto, Staff Planner Jeff Darrow, Staff Planner And approximately 20 people from the public in attendance. APPLICANT: SEASCAPE DEVELOPMENT. LLC (SLU 07-000014/REZ 07-000064) a.State Land Use Boundary amendment for 10.001 acres of land from an Agricultural to an Urban District. b.Change of Zone for 10.001 acres of land from an Agricultural 5-acre (A-5a) to a Multiple- Family Residential 1,000-square foot (RM-1a) district. The property is located south of the Kona Palisades Subdivision, approximately 1,200 feet south th of the extension of Kakahiaka Street, Kalaoa 5, North Kona, Hawaii, TMK:7-3-10:3. ALAMEDA: Agenda item No. 4. Applicant: SeascapeDevelopment. Staff? DARROW: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I can direct your attention to the location map, the area of this application is within the North Kona District of Hawaii. More specifically, we are looking at the Kona Palisades area in this particular area. Just for orientation, we have Queen Kaahumanu Highway running in a north-south direction. We have the red line running through the center of the Highway as being the Special Management Area; everything makai of that line is within the SMA. This particular area is not located within the Special Management Area. On the top of the map running in a north-south direction, we have Mamalahoa Highway or Old Mamalahoa Highway or Hawaii Belt Road also it’s referred to. Running in an east-west direction is Kaiminani Drive. And again we are looking at mainly Kona Palisades Subdivision. The area of this application is identified in the larger red dot; this is the area for Seascape Development, LLC. EXHIBIT B 1 They are requesting a State Land Use Boundary amendment from Agricultural to Urban for approximately 10.001 acres. Additionally, they are requesting a Change of Zone from Agricultural 5-acres to Multiple-Family 1,000-square feet or RM-1 for the 10.001 acres. The applicant in this case is proposing to do a 306-unit affordable housing rental project. This is the preliminary layout. There are approximately 18 three-story structures, which they are made up of approximately 90 studio units, 108 one-bedroom units and 108 two-bedroom units. This particular parcel is a part of a previous 50-acre lot subdivision, which was subdivided, this 50-acre lot was subdivided into five lots; you see Lots 1, 2, 3, 4 and then the roadway lot as No. 5. And the particular area that we are looking at is located in this area. You’ll notice that there already is an area that’s been rezoned in this particular area; it’s identified in brown, which is the zoning for Multiple-Family Residential 4,000-square feet. Currently, the applicant is working on a 108-unit affordable housing project on that particular property. We’ve encountered a situation where the applicant -, the Planning Department had sent out a notification to the applicant, requesting that they do the second round of notification where they inform surrounding property owners of the hearing date. Unfortunately, the applicant says that he did not receive that letter, therefore did not do the second notification. It appears, because of this situation, that this application will be continued. I’ll defer to the Corporation Counsel. But before I do that, I’d also like to bring to your attention that we have received a letter this morning from Executive Director, Anthony Ching, from the State Land Use Commission. This is the same letter that is identified as Exhibit 11 within your application. This is a comment letter from the Land Use Commission stating their concerns regarding this application. Additionally, just to bring to your attention, we have Exhibit 12 that the Planning Director had sent response to these particular issues. Additionally, we’ve received – since this application has been forwarded to the Planning Commission – we’ve received a comment letter from the Office th of Housing and Community Development dated July 18; you folks should have gotten that within your packet. With that, I’d like to defer to our Corporation Counsel as to how to proceed with this application. ALAMEDA: Mr. Torigoe? TORIGOE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Given the lack of notice to the surrounding property owners as required under your Rules and the Codes, I have to recommend deferral or continuance of this matter as well. However, it has been agendized, and the Executive Director of LUC, Mr. Tony Ching, I believe is here and would like to testify, so I think you should allow him to speak to you. You have his written testimony also. But I would not advise going into any kind of deliberation on this because, you know, you don’t want to deprive the surrounding property owners of the opportunity to be involved. ALAMEDA: That sounds like a good recommendation. I agree with it. Can we start? Okay. Applicant, please raise your hand, right hand. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth now before the Hawaii County Planning Commission? DICKLER: I do. ALAMEDA: All right. Would you please state your name and address for the record? EXHIBIT B 2 DICKLER: My name is Alan Dickler. Address is P. O. Box 391078, Keauhou. ALAMEDA: Thank you. You may proceed. DICKLER: I do not -. Thank you, Mr. Commissioner, Mr. Chairman and Fellow Commissioners. Upon notification from the Planning Department that this item would be deferred, I did not prepare a formal presentation today. Just in addition to what Jeff stated, I want to make sure that this is a 100% affordable rental program that we undertook in conjunction with the administration and tried to get something in this area. We’re presently proposing a 60% of median income rental, so it’s -, and it will be tax incentive -, tax bond financed. We are going to partner with a major affordable housing administration, a developer and the administration – the project’s actually gone too big for us as a small independent development company – and they have provided the 201H filing with the Office of Housing and Community Development, similar as to the State tax financing that they are doing. ALAMEDA: All right. We’re going to be deferring this, so just keep that in mind. Is there any questions for the applicant? Okay. Do you have any objections to our continuance? DICKLER: No, I have no objections to the continuance. And the mistake was on my, was on me, and I apologize for that. ALAMEDA: No problem. Okay. Well, we do have testimony. You may be seated; I’ll call you. Let me call in Mr. Tony Ching and Joel Gimpel. All right. Please raise your right hands. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth now before the Hawaii County Planning Commission? GIMPEL: I do. CHING: I do. ALAMEDA: Thank you. Mr. Ching, we’ll start with you. Please state your name and address for the record. CHING: Yes. Good afternoon. My name is Anthony Ching. My address is P. O. Box 2359, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96804-2359. ALAMEDA: Okay. Thank you. We do have your written testimony. Is there anything you’d like to summarize for us, or -? CHING: I -, if I could very quickly -. ALAMEDA: Okay. CHING: Summarize my testimony. ALAMEDA: Sure. EXHIBIT B 3 CHING: I am a non-voting administrative officer to the Land Use Commission; I serve at their pleasure. While I understand that this Commission will not be addressing the substantive issues of this matter at this time. I offer facts and my observations for your consideration at the appropriate time in your calendar. My testimony here today draws th exclusively from my April 30 letter to the County of Hawaii Planning Department, and with your leave, I will summarize that correspondence. I believe that the subject area was derived from a portion of a larger 50-acre parcel; that subdivision of this 50-acre parcel produced five parcels. The area now known as Parcel 51 was reclassified to the State Land Use Urban District by the County pursuant to Chapter 205-3.1 (c) of Hawaii Revised Statutes. I know for you that in our correspondence to the Commission on this matter, we expressed concern regarding the potential development of the entire 50-acre parcel in a piece meal fashion. And we recommended that the County comprehensively consider the entire parcel as a single development, especially if similar residential and related uses were proposed on the 50-acre parcel. I do know for you that the Third Circuit Court has ruled that projects should be reviewed by State and County agencies in an integrated and comprehensive manner. I would -, in a context of the project action, I believe that my correspondence indicates that the remaining parcels would seem to be a part of a larger project by the same developer of Parcel 51. I would just offer as a finding that my Commission is charged with the overall administration of the State Land Use Law. As such, I believe it’s my Commission that must be the final arbiter, where any controversy exists, in determining whether a petition for district boundary amendment is appropriately before an individual county. And that while Section 205-3.1 of the State Land Use Law provides that petitions for district boundary amendments involving 15 acres or less are within the jurisdiction of the appropriate county authority, I believe that, should the cumulative project involve acreage greater than 15 acres, that that petition is subject to the jurisdiction of my Commission. The subject petition, involving 10 acres of land approximately, represents the second action by this applicant to urbanize a portion of their original 50-acre holding. I would note that the Traffic Impact Analysis Report refers to the development and describes it that the action is consisting four separate lots. I believe that the TIAR considers then the 50-acre area as a single project. Therefore, it’s my belief that the subject petition should be properly submitted to the jurisdiction of the Commission. I make this representation in my capacity as the administrative officer of the Commission, the Land Use Commission, and not on behalf of the Land Use Commission or individual commissioners. I also acknowledge that the petitioner in this docket may choose to change their filing in this manner, but I note that I am not yet aware of that change or any change as of this time. If then or else it remains the same, I would repeat my belief that the subject petition for district boundary amendment should be properly submitted to the jurisdiction of the State Land Use Commission. Thank you. ALAMEDA: Thank you, Mr. Ching. Any questions for Mr. Ching? Seeing none, thank you very much. All right. Commissioner Domingo, you had a question? DOMINGO: Yeah. EXHIBIT B 4 ALAMEDA: Oh, okay. DOMINGO: Mr. Ching, you’re of an opinion that rather than taking it incrementally, that the developer should consider the total acreage in his name to come submit an application before the State Land Use Commission for boundary amendment? CHING:Yes, that is my belief. And it’s also based on another item in my th correspondence of April 30, which indicated that Westpro, aka Seascape, had taken out a docket number for intention of filing with my Commission. DOMINGO: I see. Thank you. ALAMEDA: Thank you, Commissioner Domingo, for asking that. Commissioner Iwashita? IWASHITA: Can you -, I didn’t -, I guess I don’t understand the full impact of what you just said, that last statement. Can you expand upon that, that they pulled a docket number? CHING: There were consultations and indications that the developer would be submitting a petition for district boundary amendment with my Land Use Commission. A docket number was issued for their purpose of filing that petition.No docket has been received. The representation that I had was that that petition for district boundary amendment would address or cover the remainder of the 50 acres that was not urbanized by the County, and otherwise known as Parcel 51. IWASHITA: The one that’s being developed now. CHING: I believe Parcel 51 was originally reclassified by the County of Hawaii in 2004. I believe what you have before you today, this parcel is known as Parcel 3, I believe, Parcel 3. IWASHITA: Okay. So, and then your expectation is that, given what you’ve just said, is that you should receive some sort of docketing document and process it through the State Land Use Commission? CHING: In short. IWASHITA: Okay. Thank you. ALAMEDA: Thank you, Commissioner Iwashita. Any other questions for Mr. Ching? Commissioner Woodward. WOODWARD: Yeah, Mr. Ching, that being said, does this body have any force, or should we bother with this? ALAMEDA: Mr. Ching? EXHIBIT B 5 CHING: Commissioner, with all due respect, I don’t believe I’m in a position to provide legal advice to you as a Commission and as to your actions. I offer my observations and the facts that I believe are appropriate for this particular matter, but I leave the deliberation and action to you. WOODWARD: Well, thank you, maybe I can redirect that to Mr. Torigoe. ALAMEDA: Mr. Torigoe, get an answer? TORIGOE: As I said, I don’t think we want to, you know, get into any real substantive deliberation on this today, but I think this is a good heads-up that we can all do some legal research, and come and give you some advice when next you meet. And perhaps Mr. Dickler also would like to do that, and prepare to discuss this. ALAMEDA: Mr. Ching? CHING: If I could just add, I didn’t want to leave on a bad note that the State opposes the development of affordable housing projects such as described here. It’s not a matter of as to the merits of the project or the petition for reclassification. I believe I’m simply obliged to review petitions and applications for conformance to provisions of the State Law. I do understand, and there have been indications, that this project might be reconfigured or recast in such a manner, such as to address some of the concerns that I brought here today. But that’s not my place to say what that is, or when it will be done, or again the merits of it. I just understand that there’s possibility that it might be recast. ALAMEDA: Okay. Very good. Any further questions for Mr. Ching. Seeing none, thank you for coming today. Appreciate your testimony. See you again. Mr. Gimpel, state your name and address for the record. GIMPEL: Sure. My name is Joel Gimpel. I reside at 73-4686 Hina Lani Street in Kailua-Kona. And I’m here as the Chair of the Public Affairs Committee of the Kona Traffic th Safety Committee. We submitted written comments to Mr. Yuen on April 30, I believe, and those comments are I believe Exhibit No. 15 in your materials. Accordingly, I’ll just review the highlights of what we said, and first I should note that although we appreciate the desirability of providing affordable rental units in the Kona district, and are pleased with the mixed use element and recreational area set aside, we do have several concerns regarding traffic issues that merit your consideration and we believe should be addressed. The first of those is the single access problem. Here we have a single access route for 360 residential units, and we believe it as unconscionable because it creates an unnecessary – I’m sorry, 306 residential units – it creates an unnecessary danger to residents and visitors in the event that evacuation or emergency vehicle access is required. It’s certainly violates the intent, if not the letter, of Section 23-48 (a) of the County Code. So we urge that you require a second access route as a condition of rezoning and occupancy. The second concern we have is parking. And although the number of parking spaces that was specified in the application, which was more than 460, might satisfy the current Code requirements, those requirements are woefully inadequate. In fact that’s a situation that the EXHIBIT B 6 County Council is now addressing. In our view, one-and-a-quarter parking spaces for each studio apartment may be reasonable, but one- and two-bedroom apartments should have at least two spaces per unit plus space for guests. Indeed, the ordinance that’s currently before the County Council requires two parking spaces per residential unit plus one for every two units for guests; that totals 765 for this project. Accordingly, we believe that many more spaces, perhaps at least as much as 600, are required for the proposed number of residential units. And additional parking will of course be needed for the commercial building. We urge, however, that parking needs be balanced with the need for green areas, which might dictate the need to reduce the number of rental units contemplated in the application, given that’s only 10 acres all together. The third concern is alternative transportation. Because this development is more than a mile from the nearest grocery store, and even farther from educational, civic and other commercial centers, all of which currently require travel along Highway 19, we believe that autos and school buses will necessarily be the primary modes of transportation. To encourage safe walking and cycling, we suggest that the developer provide shared-use paths connecting to civic, education, and commercial centers in the general area. The traffic analysis and circulation plans should include appropriate bicycle and pedestrian facilities connecting this development to the community, and provision for public transportation and shuttle service capabilities. We have some other concerns. Although the State is responsible for public school education, the County has to note the effect of a large, school-age population on road infrastructure and traffic safety issues. Incredibly, neither this application nor the accompanying TIAR mentions schools, or the significant school traffic that will be generated by this and adjacent developments. Here, because the nearest schools are not within a safe or reasonable walking distance, we can expect that 200 or more school-age children will require bus or other transportation along Highway 19, Kaiminani, and Highway 190/Palani Road, adding greatly to the congestion on those roads during peak hours. In that regard, we question the applicant’s failure to recommend any traffic congestion mitigation at several key area intersections, because, as asserted by the applicant, the Levels of Service with or without this project wouldn’t change. That assertion is misleading, because Level of “E,” for example, means delays of between 30.1 to 45 seconds. So if the average delay had been 30.1 seconds before this development, and the development increased the delay by 14 seconds, it would still be Level of Service “E” despite the delay having increased nearly 50%. Therefore, even if the additional delays inevitably caused by this development don’t change the Level of Service, we believe that mitigation measures are appropriate and should be required. We also note that the TIAR accompanying the application was based on a traffic count that is more than one-and-a-half years old, and that traffic has notably increased since then. Perhaps, an updated TIAR prepared by a traffic consultant chosen by the County and using more recent traffic counts and paid for by the applicant will be more objective. Finally, the developer ought to include traffic calming features in the internal road layout and on the roads immediately external to the project. So to summarize our recommendations in interest of better traffic safety and flow, we urge: 1) require a second access route, 2) require at least 600 parking spaces, or better yet, require what the current draft ordinance before the County Council requires, or reduce the number of dwelling EXHIBIT B 7 units, 3) require a shared-use bike and pedestrian paths to civic, education and commercial enterprises in the area and provision for public transportation, 4) require traffic mitigation measures at key area intersections, 5) require an updated TIAR, and 6) require traffic calming features on internal roads and on roads immediately outside the project. (At this time, 3:08 p.m., the Chair granted Joel Gimpel’s request to present testimony on Item No. 7 regarding the Planning Director’s amendment to Chapter 25 (Zoning Code), Hawaii County Code 1983 (2005 Edition), as amended, to create a “superstore” zoning district – SEE EXHIBIT C. At 3:10 p.m, the Commission again took up the subject application.) ALAMEDA: All right. Can I ask the applicant to return? Again, Fellow Commissioners, this will be continued to the next hearing, so -. But if you have burning desire to ask the applicant a question or so. Commissioner Siracusa? SIRACUSA: Yes. You heard – and I know you took notes because I was watching – comments by Mr. Ching from the Land Use Commission and by Mr. Gimpel from Kona Traffic Safety. And so I would like to hear if you have any response to any of the points, to any of the points of your choice that they made. DICKLER: I think that, to respond to Mr. Ching’s comments, I think that he is correct that we had started the process to get the remaining parcel, the three parcels that were remaining, into the LUC. Timing was taking much longer than we had anticipated; some was our fault, some was process fault. And in order to help the County and the administration do their request, we went forward with this proposal specifically for the affordable housing. The market-rate housing is going to go, is planned to go through the LUC; we are in process of an EIS for that portion of it. ALAMEDA: Ms. Siracusa? SIRACUSA: Just to clarify, he made a point about whether you had submitted your paperwork to the LUC, and they had already given you a docket number, but hadn’t received the paperwork back. Could you -? DICKLER: That’s correct -. SIRACUSA: Expand on that a little, please? DICKLER: The requirement as I understand it – and I’m not the final, I’m not an attorney, I don’t do this for a living, and I don’t do this everyday – and the process was we needed to get -, we were told we needed an Environmental Assessment at first. And when we prepared that, we were told that wasn’t good; we needed an EIS to be done. When we prepared that, we were told we had to include certain things that weren’t included. And now two years later we still haven’t submitted the EIS, which has to be submitted before we can submit the application to the LUC. And so it’s been -, we have worked diligently for two years, but we have not been able to get the appropriate documents completed to submit. Again, in meetings with the Mayor, the owner of our company’s and with Ed Taira from OHCD, we were asked to try to do something to mitigate the severe problem for affordable rentals. And we came up with EXHIBIT B 8 an initial plan, found out that it was financially infeasible to get it financed, and this is the plan that we ended up with. ALAMEDA: We’re going to be doing this all again, so I just wanted to remind you. Mr. Woodward. WOODWARD: This will be brief. I only have two suggestions. One is you’ve got Mr. Ching here. You might just have a talk with him, and see what he can do about expediting your, getting your proposal on the Land Use Commission docket because he would be the man to talk to. The second thing is you heard Mr. Gimpel’s testimony about his concerns with regard to traffic, second access, etc. etc. And I don’t expect you to come with an answer right now, but between now and the time that we’re hear again, it would be interesting to hear if you come up with a response to some of those concerns. DICKLER: Some of his concerns, we have -, we noted in his letter that went to the Planning Department, and we responded to some of his concerns there, and will continue -. We have met with Mr. Gimpel and his Traffic Committee on a number of different occasions on a number of projects that we have done, so we are not -, we will continue to meet with them. WOODWARD: Thank you. ALAMEDA: All right. Thank you. Seeing no further questions, all those in -. Is there any objection for continuing this agenda item? Seeing none, the agenda item continued to when, when? What’s the next -? st DARROW: The next Kona meeting is August 31. st ALAMEDA: Okay. Continued to August 31. All right, thank you. DICKLER: Thank you. DARROW: So we’ll just continue the matter. ALAMEDA: Just continue. Presiding Officer has the right to do that one without making a motion. Correct? Okay, seeing no objection, we are okay. All right. The discussion ended at 3:13 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Noriko Sauer West Hawaii Secretary EXHIBIT B 9