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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2011-05-19 Leeward Exh B - UH Marine Center LEEWARD PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAI‘I HEARING TRANSCRIPT MAY 19, 2011 UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT HILO A regularly advertised hearing on the application of KALĀKAUA MARINE EDUCATION CENTER (SMA 11-046) was called to order at 10:55 a.m. in the West Hawai‘i Civic Center, Community Center, Building G, 74-5044 Ane Keohokalole Highway, Kailua-Kona, Hawai‘i, with Vice Chair Lani Bowman presiding. COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: Lani Bowman, Brandi Beaudet, Thomas Hickcox, Wayne Iokepa, Richard Nelson and Thomas Whittemore ABSENT AND EXCUSED: Geraldine Giffin STAFF PRESENT: Julie Mecklenburg (Deputy Corporation Counsel), BJ Leithead Todd (Planning Director), Daryn Arai (Planning Program Manager), Jeff Darrow (Staff Planner) and Roz Newlon (Staff Planner) And six people from the public in attendance. APPLICANT: UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT HILO KALĀKAUA MARINE EDUCATION CENTER (SMA 11-046) Application for a Special Management Area Use Permit to allow the development of the Kalākaua Marine Education Center at Puakō. The property is located on the makai side of Puakō Beach Drive, adjacent to and north of the Puakō boat ramp, Lālāmilo, South Kohala, Hawai‘i, TMK: 6-6-2: 45. BOWMAN: The third item on the agenda is the application from University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, Kalākaua Marine Education Center, SMA Permit 11-046, application for a Special Management Area Use Permit to allow the development of the Kalākaua Marine Education Center at Puakō. Staff, present the presentation, please. ARAI: Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Good morning, Commissioners. COMMISSIONERS: Good morning. ARAI: And it is still morning. The application before you, as the Chairwoman mentioned, is a Special Management Area Use Permit to allow the development of the Kalākaua Marine Education Center that’s part of the University of Hawai‘i. The subject property is located here, outlined in black. It is situated within an area designated Open by the County – that is indicated here by this dark green color. Surrounding lands include this area, the pink area, that are designated for Resort uses, yellow areas representing Single-Family Residential zoned lands, and this lighter green color representing Ag-5. To your right is the Queen Ka‘ahumanu Highway. Coming off of the Queen Ka‘ahumanu Highway is Puakō Beach Drive, which runs down along the frontage of the subject property and then onto all of Puakō Beach lots. Puakō Bay is situated in this particular location here, and the boat ramp is located in this approximate location as shown by my laser pointer. 1 EXHIBIT B This is a General Plan LUPAG Map depiction showing the surrounding lands, as well as the subject property. As you may see, the subject property again is located here, outlined in black, and it’s designated largely Open by the General Plan, but a small portion is within an area designated for Low-Density Urban uses, basically Single-Family Residential uses. The proposed project site is located in this particular area. There is no specific recommendation by the South Kohala Community Development Plan aside from the fact that, as you can read here, the UH Marine Center is identified as a proposed use; so the Community Development Plan clearly anticipated that this proposed use would be established at this particular location. So with that being said, we find that the proposed project is consistent with the South Kohala CDP. This is the State Land Use district boundaries – the subject property, again, located here. This map up here is to depict the property entirely within the State Land Use Conservation district. Based on other maps that we have, we believe that the Urban district classification bisects the property in this general alignment. So we believe a portion is in Urban, a portion is in Conservation. Regardless of the alignment, the applicant has committed to applying for a Conservation District Use Permit once they have, if they are successful in obtaining a Special Management Area Use Permit from the Planning Commission. Through this SMA Use Permit request, the applicant is proposing the development of the property that will accommodate the Marine Education Center, which will be comprised of various individual structures. First is an academic center, which will house laboratories, administrative offices and classrooms; that structure will be one story in height. Second will be what they are referencing as the boat building on the site plan; that building will provide for small boat repair, storage facilities and other type of activities. There will be a 7,000-square foot auditorium building, one story in height again, that will also double as a dining hall. And – I’m going to skip this – but I’ll go down to the faculty building and accessory caretaker’s unit that is also a one-story structure. The only two-story structure on the property will be the dormitory facility that will be able to house up to 50 students, as well as twelve faculty members. This is the project site of the property, with Puakō Beach Drive located toward the bottom of the site plan and Puakō Bay located on the upper left hand corner. As you can tell from this, you see where they’ve depicted the approximate location of the Urban district and Conservation district boundary line. Access will be provided at two points here as shown on this conceptual plan to a parking lot that, if I remember correctly, I believe they had about 45 stalls being planned. Nearest to Puakō Beach Drive is the proposed academic building, again, the classroom building, here. Off to the right is the auditorium complex. Further makai you have the boat building, or maintenance facilities, in this location. Faculty building in this particular location here closest to Puakō Bay, and the dormitory, the two-story dormitory complex, located to the northern portion of the property. Now, the makai boundary of this five-acre project site is about 200 feet from the certified shoreline. Also, from the makai boundary of the project site is the Ala Kahakai Trail, and that trail is located no less than 80 feet away from the makai boundary of this project site. This is an aerial photo with the Puakō boat ramp located on the right hand side of this photograph, and the Puakō Beach Drive located toward the top. The project site is basically in this general location here, oops, I’m sorry, it’s further away from the shoreline, but it’s basically in this area here. As you can see, you see a portion of the Ala Kahakai Trail in this location. 2 EXHIBIT B The Planning Director is recommending approval of this SMA Use Permit application subject to recommended conditions of approval. If I may direct your attention to your background report. On the first page, we attempted to outline the five primary structures on the subject property. We did make a couple of errors. First of all, where it says “Boat Building,” a simple amendment I would like to make to the background report is that it is a 6,600-square foot structure, so basically referencing a floor area, not length – I wouldn’t think something would be that long anyway. And the dormitory structure further down on the page, the only change we would like to put here is that the accessory caretaker unit is not a part of the dormitory, it’s actually a part of the faculty building; so we are going to simply amend by placing the reference to the caretaker’s unit and attaching it to the sentence discussing the faculty building. If you go to your recommendation report, it recites the same discussion regarding the proposed improvements, and we are going to make the same corrections on the recommendation report as well. We do have two letters that were provided by the applicant, dated May 5, and those communication have been distributed to all of the Commissioners. We also note that there are two letters by the applicant in your background, attached to your background report, dated April 28, and those letters were discussing, well, responding to comments provided by the various commenting agencies; we inadvertently left out Page 2 from both of those letters. So I recently distributed the master copy to all of you and it’s making its way around, and that contains the missing page. So with that, I stand ready to answer any questions that you may have. BOWMAN: Commissioners? I have a question. You had said that you were taking off the accessory caretaker’s unit from the dormitory. ARAI: Yes. BOWMAN: But don’t you have to take off the “and 12 faculty?” Isn’t the faculty separate also? ARAI: No, the dormitory will accommodate twelve faculty members. There is another faculty building -. BOWMAN: Okay, I’m sorry. Thank you. ARAI: Yeah, so I think the dormitory will actually provide accommodation for faculty while the faculty building itself contains their offices and so forth and so on. Maybe the applicant can clarify that later when he comes up. BOWMAN: Okay, thank you. Any other questions, Commissioners? May I call the applicant and/or their representative to please come up and be sworn in? Would you please raise your right hand? Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth on this matter now before the Hawai‘i Leeward County Planning Commission? REPRESENTATIVES: Yes. BOWMAN: And would you please maybe state your names for the record? LEJEUNE: I’m Ted LeJeune. I’m a project manager with the UH Hilo, Office of Facilities Planning and Construction. 3 EXHIBIT B BOWMAN: Thank you. YADA: My name is Harry Yada. I’m the Director of Real Property for University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. BOWMAN: Thank you. TURNER: Dr. Jason Turner, associate faculty for Department of Marine Science and director of Kalākaua Marine Education Center. BOWMAN: Thank you. FEE: Tom Fee, principal with Helber Hastert & Fee, Planners, the planners on this project. BOWMAN: Okay. Would you like to begin your presentation, or -? Thank you. FEE: Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and for the excellent presentation, Mr. Arai. Tom Fee with Helber Hastert & Fee. I’d like to introduce Dr. Turner to provide some background and talk about the vision for the Kalākaua Marine Education Center. TURNER: Thank you. Thank you all for giving us some time. I’m just going to read something that I put together. It’s been just over 20 years since UH Hilo professor, Dr. Walter Dudley came to the university with the vision, and that was for the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo to develop a world- class marine facility at Puakō. Walt knew then what we all know now that marine resources on Hawai‘i Island are like no other in the world, and it’s our kuleana to, our responsibility to study, care for and then help to manage them. He also realized that there were other marine facilities throughout the world situated in unique ecosystems like here in Hawai‘i, and the researchers and students would travel thousands of miles to study what we see everyday in our backyards. He also knew that the best way to study these resources was to provide opportunities for local communities and to showcase this research to scientists throughout the world was to build a first-class marine facility. At UH Hilo we have been applying this as a proof of concept for the past 20 years, as part of our annual summer course class; it’s a Quantitative Underwater Ecological Surveying Techniques class, which I come from today down at Ke‘ei – so excuse my casual dress. But in of all students are learning how to do, among other things to fish surveys, assess coral disease and conduct surveys of invertebrate populations while scuba diving. And this course is presently taught at very rustic setting where students camp in tents, lab works done on picnic tables and we run all our lectures and analysis and statistics using generators. This model, although has been successful, brings several limitations like flooded tents, insect infestations and fatigue associated with living outside, which is also shared by researchers who do work along Hawai‘i Island, as well as the students. And the marine lab at Puakō would provide educators, researchers and students a stable platform to do research and to teach some of these unique field labs we can offer here on Hawai‘i Island. Finally, Walt knew that the Puakō community represented an ideal location for such a marine facility as it offers some of the best coral reefs in Hawai‘i, stable weather patterns and is a nice location right between East and West Hawai‘i, and finally has a local community dedicated to protecting the marine environment. And I think they, the community, sums it up best in their mission, and I quote, “is to promote awareness and protection of our unique environmental assets of 4 EXHIBIT B reef, shoreline and forest, including the turtles, fish, birds and whales that inhabit these areas … and to share with them our feelings for the beauty of our neighborhood and for our cultural history, in the sprit of aloha.” And I think we at University of Hawai‘i at Hilo share that mission, and hope you help us in developing this facility. Thank you. BOWMAN: Thank you. FEE: Madam Chair, can I just make one point about the twelve faculty units? They are in a separate building; they are not in the student dorm. So there is that, if we can make the change and add the twelve units, that would be perfect. BOWMAN: Anything else? Any questions, Commissioners, of the applicant? Commissioner Hickcox. HICKCOX: Under the “Boat Building,” it says, “marine support facilities to accommodate small boat repair, maintenance and storage activities, scuba tank filling,” etc. Is this a commercial venture, or is it just to support the activity at the -? FEE: Just to support the activity. This is a university function. BOWMAN: Thank you. Any other questions? I have one. You had said that your two trips a day would be mainly on the weekends, is that true? That’s what I read in the background report. FEE: We are talking about projected boat usage of the boat ramp. BOWMAN: Right. FEE: That’s the average usage, and it could be more; but on average every week that’s probably close to what the average is. BOWMAN: But in your background – where is it – you said it would be on the weekends mostly, which I would assume, I thought school was during the week. TURNER: Is it okay if I clarify this one? So this is not going to be replacing or supplementing the campus of Hilo; so this is going to be for specialty field courses typically running during two-week periods on the weekends or over the summer semesters. So in that case we are looking at a running average. Even a boat facility will only house four vessels. On our worst day we may have four vessels on the water at once. On another day we may have zero. So we are looking at two vessels on average. And we’re going to have higher use on weekends, higher use in summer and then higher use during breaks like spring break or something, because this facility really will house students during the times when they are not at the major campuses – when they are doing two-week field studies, when they are doing, say, the QUEST’s field class like what we are teaching right now. And the QUEST field class is an example we don’t use any boats, so for that two-week period there will be zero boat use. So that’s why we are looking at two as an average. BOWMAN: So your occupancy then for your dormitories would only be during that time. TURNER: It’s going to be sporadic. It’s going to be -. Think of it as four primary uses. One to supplement UH Hilo education, or Hawai‘i system education, right now – so for example for these 5 EXHIBIT B two weeks we are teaching a field course, we would be located there. There is a six-week summer session, we would be located there. When a group comes over from Cornell to do two weeks of a field class, right now they are staying in a hotel or at Hawai‘i Preparatory Academy, they would hopefully stay there and do their work out of there. Whether they require boats or not would be determined by the use pattern. But to say that this is, you know, a 24/7 boat based running facility is not accurate. So that’s why we came up with this two on average; depending on a class, depending on when it’s taught and what vessel support it needs, we might need two per day on average, heavier on the weekends. Does that make sense? BOWMAN: I just maybe have one more question. Sorry, Commissioners. So the residents whoever would be residing there, the students, they would be directly related to projects within the Kalākaua Marine -? TURNER: Correct. So they would be either enrolled in UH Hilo classes, they would be part of visiting scientists groups that would come over for a week or two to do, to teach their own classes or to do research based in UH, or they could even be, if we are talking about the auditorium, a community-base group that’s renting our facility for a day or a couple of days or something like that. So we are not talking about, you know, moving a spring semester course to this facility for the entire semester; it’s going to be sporadic use based upon the -. BOWMAN: Directly related to the Marine -. TURNER: Absolutely. Correct. BOWMAN: Okay. Any other questions, Commissioners? If none, you may be seated. And I will, we do have some testifiers. So if I could bring up all three testifiers and swear you in, and then we’ll go one by one. First of all, Peter Hackstedde, Rob Shallenberger and Jason Turner. TURNER: I think, I gave mine earlier, so can I -. BOWMAN: Oh, okay, yes, thank you. So if you would raise your right hand, please. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth on this matter now before the Leeward Hawai‘i Planning Commission? TESTIFIERS: I do. BOWMAN: Thank you. Would you like to go first? SHALLENBERGER: Why don’t we offer Peter first -. BOWMAN: Okay, Peter first. This is Peter Hackstedde? HACKSTEDDE: Yes, I’m Peter Hackstedde. I’m president of the Puakō Community Association, and I just wanted to comment on the SMA permit. We brought up five issues that we had with this program – basically the water, the sewage, the fire and the boat ramp. And they have answered all those things. We are excited about this project. We think this would be a beautiful add to the Puakō Community Association. They have all these kids down here. They are down here all the summer. Every summer they come in there; they do all this great research on the reefs. And it’s just to our benefit, so we can see what things are going on with the reef. And it’s just an added 6 EXHIBIT B benefit that would just be -. We are extremely happy about this. We know it’s going on for years; 20 years, they’ve been looking at this project. It’s a, you know, hopefully, we can move on. But it’s really, we are excited about this thing and that’s just what I wanted to make sure you knew. Thank you. BOWMAN: Thank you. Any questions from the Commissioners for Mr. Hackstedde? And you are Mr. Shallenberger? SHALLENBERGER: Rob Shallenberger. BOWMAN: Thank you. SHALLENBERGER: I am a property owner and a boat owner and a member of the board of the Puakō Community Association and, like Peter, I’ve been working with the University on this project for several years. We felt it might be appropriate to make some comments about the boat ramp since there were comments that were received from the State, from others and from us. We do share concerns about the prospect of additional boats in an already crowded, congested situation. But frankly, I think it would be inappropriate and misdirected to make the University, hold the University hostage for a problem that already exists. But I would say we do really need some attention to that problem. There are several things that could be done by the State, some of which involve a good bit of money, some of which could be done tomorrow. For example, there are a number of commercial users of the boat ramp; when a commercial boat comes down to take people out to watch whales or snorkeling and 20 people show up in their Honda rental cars and park in all the boat parking spaces, it becomes completely untenable, and that needs to be managed. It is a small location, but having put boats in there for several years, I know that I can time things at the right time; we find ways to work together. It’s only when we crowd in with a lot of other folks that have other purposes, we have problems. We do need an expanded ramp. We do need expanded parking. There is State land across the street that could be accommodated for some parking. And ultimately we are probably going to need to manage the commercial uses better. And finally, if the State would keep the Kawaihae ramp clear of all the sand that accumulates several times a year, then we would have a much smaller problem over at Puakō. So with that, I would say thank you for looking at this and thank you for letting us testify, and we hope you will vote in support of this permit. BOWMAN: Thank you. Any questions, Commissioners? Anyone else? May I hear a motion, if you are ready? IOKEPA: Madam Chair? BOWMAN: Yes, Commissioner Iokepa. IOKEPA: I’d like to propose a motion granting Special Management Area Use Permit approval for Permit SMA 11-6 (sic), with amendments to conditions. MECKLENBURG: Eleven-forty-six? IOKEPA: Eleven-forty-six. Mahalo. BOWMAN: Thank you. A second? 7 EXHIBIT B BEAUDET: I second. BOWMAN: Commissioner Beaudet. Any discussion? Will we take the vote, please? ARAI: Thank you, Madam Chair. Commissioner Iokepa? IOKEPA: Aye. ARAI: Commissioner Beaudet? BEAUDET: Aye. ARAI: Commissioner Hickcox? HICKCOX: Aye. ARAI: Commissioner Nelson? NELSON: Aye. ARAI: Commissioner Whittemore? WHITTEMORE: Aye. ARAI: And Madam Chairwoman? BOWMAN: Aye. ARAI: Madam Chairwoman, you have six aye votes – motion carries. BOWMAN: Thank you. The discussion ended at 11:20 a.m. Respectfully submitted, Noriko Sauer, Secretary Leeward Planning Commission 8 EXHIBIT B