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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2015-08-06 Hearing Transcript - Glory Nani Mau REZ 792 WINDWARD PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAI‘I HEARING TRANSCRIPT AUGUST 6, 2015 GLORY NANI MAU, LLC (REZ 792) A regularly advertised hearing on the application of was called to order at 9:00 a.m. in the County of Hawai‘i Aupuni Center Conference Room, 101 Pauahi Street, Hilo, Hawai‘i with Chairman Myles Miyasato presiding. COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: Myles Miyasato, Donn Dela Cruz, Charles Heaukulani, Gregory Henkel, Donald Ikeda, and Raylene Moses. ALSO PRESENT: Duane Kanuha (Planning Director), Danny Patel (Deputy Corporation Counsel for the Windward Planning Commission), Daryn Arai (Planning Program Manager), Jeff Darrow (Staff Planner), Maija Jackson (Staff Planner), and Sarah Hata-Finley (Commission Secretary). And approximately 4 people from the public in attendance. APPLICANT: GLORY NANI MAU, LLC (Amend REZ 792) Request for a 5-year extension of time to Condition B (secure Final Subdivision Approval) of Change of Zone Ordinance No. 08-72, which rezoned the subject properties from an Agricultural-3 acres (A-3a) and Agricultural-10 acres (A-10a) zoning districts to an Agricultural- 1 acre (A-1a) zoning district to accommodate a proposed 25-lot subdivision. The project site is a part of the Nani Mau Gardens complex, bounded by Railroad Avenue, Makalika Street and Awa Street within the Pana‛ewa Farm Lots Subdivision, Waiākea, South Hilo, Hawai‛i, TMK: 2-2- 048: portion of 013 and 093. MIYASATO: The first item on today’s agenda is Glory Nani Mau, LLC. JACKSON: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, Commissioners. MOSES/MIYASATO: Good morning. DELA CRUZ: Morning. JACKSON: The first item on the agenda is a request for an amendment to a Change of Zone Ordinance, No. 08-72. The subject property is located in the South Hilo District in the Panaʽewa area of Hilo. You can see the property outlined in red in the middle of the slide. Kanoelehua Avenue is running in a north-south direction on the left side of the slide. And then, you have Makalika Street coming off in an east-west direction from the highway. 1 EXHIBIT A So, this property has access from Makalika Street in this area here, as well as Awa Street in this area here. And then they also have frontage along Railroad Avenue, which also runs in a north- south direction on the east side of the property. The property is zoned Agricultural – 1 acre, which is shown in the light green, and all surrounding properties are also zoned Agricultural of various lot sizes, from Agricultural – 10 acres down to 3 acres. The General Plan designation for this area is Low Density Urban which allows single-family residential development. And the State Land Use District for the property is Agricultural which is shown in the light green. You can see that most of the surrounding properties are in the Agricultural District except for the Hilo area near the highway is shown as Urban, which is the pink, as well as a portion of Panaʽewa is also in the Urban District to the south. This is an aerial photo of the property and surrounding area. Just to orient you a little bit further, this is Makalika Street that comes off of the highway and then this, this—these buildings are part of the Nani Mau Gardens, so the subject property is actually a portion of the Nani Mau Gardens, as well as this area to the northeast. The surrounding land uses are mostly residential and agricultural. Here you have quite a few houses. There’s little residential-agricultural subdivisions in this area here, and then over in this area on the block. The Applicant is requesting an amendment to Condition B of the zoning ordinance in order to provide more time to secure final subdivision approval for a proposed 25-lot residential- agricultural subdivision. Condition B required that final subdivision be secured by May of 2013, so the Applicant is requesting an additional five years from the date of this proposed amendment. This is their preliminary subdivision plan. You can see, again, access off of Awa Street, as well as off of Makalika in this area here. There will be no direct access off of Railroad Avenue. So, you have the road coming off in this direction over to a cul-de-sac, and then the 25 lots are in this general area here. This is a view of the existing access on Awa Street. Obviously, this would be improved to a full driveway. And then, this is a view off of Makalika Street. The access is currently gated. This would also be improved to subdivision standards. And then this is a view of the property. This is Railroad Avenue looking back towards Hilo Bay, and this is the subject property where these trees are located here. So, you can see it’s mostly, contains trees and grass vegetation. The Director is recommending that a favorable recommendation be forwarded to the County Council for this request. And that—oh, before I conclude my presentation, we would like to 2 EXHIBIT A make one minor change to one of the conditions. If you look at Condition B, you’ll notice that the only change that we had made so far to these conditions was just to update the fair share fees, and so the other change we want to make just to make it very clear that this is another five-year time extension, would be changing Condition B wording to say in the first sentence, “Plans for the proposed subdivision shall be submitted to the Planning Department and Final Subdivision Approval secured within five years from the effective date of this amended ordinance.” So, just changing the last word from amendment to amended ordinance. So, that makes it very clear that the five-year extension would be from the date that the Council approves this ordinance if they choose to do so. With that, that concludes my presentation. MIYASATO: Thank you. Commissioners, any questions for staff? I have a question, Maija. For Condition H, what would be required for these 25 lots? JACKSON: Are you referring to the affordable housing policy? MIYASATO: Yes. JACKSON: They would be required to have a certain percentage of the—actually, there’s various ways they can fulfill the affordable housing requirement. It can either be through a cash payment or having a portion of the lots be affordable, or if they develop residential units, having a portion of those residential units be affordable. And, I don’t know exactly what proportion without looking at that section of Code. I can get that for you if you’d like. MIYASATO: Okay, so at this point, there’s no commitment to anything on that. JACKSON: No, they—they have to fulfill affordable housing requirements that are, that are listed in Chapter 11 of the Hawaiʽi County Code. MIYASATO: Okay, thank you. JACKSON: You’re welcome. MIYASATO: Can we have the Applicant or representative come forward, please? HEAUKULANI: Mr. Chair, while we’re situating the Applicant, I just wanted to disclose. I, I do not know that this is a conflict. I do work for a group called Faith Group, LLC and its principals. They do business out of the Nani Mau Gardens complex. I don’t know anything about this entity. The name Glory Nani Mau, LLC may have crossed my desk, but I don’t do any work for them, but I wanted to disclose that. My business relationship with Faith Group, LLC and its principals doesn’t affect my, doesn’t sway me in any way. MIYASATO: Okay, thank you. 3 EXHIBIT A FUKE: Oh, I’m sorry. MIYASATO: Good morning. Could you please raise your right hand? FUKE: Good morning. MIYASATO: Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth on this matter now before the Hawaiʽi County Planning Commission? FUKE: Yes, I do. MIYASATO: Could you please state your name and residence? FUKE: Sure. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the Commission. My name is Sidney Fuke. I’m here assisting the Applicant, Glory Nani Mau, LLC. With me today is the owner/representative, Ms. Helen Koo. She’s sitting in the back. I’d like to just, well first of all, just to indicate that as far as the staff’s recommendation and the proposed amended condition, you know, the Applicant has reviewed the Background Report and the Recommendation and understandably is very appreciative of the staff’s favorable recommendation. I’d like to share with the Commission some general background as far as the history of the project which kind of like dates me, because well, it kind of dates me. I kind of remember that the original developer was this person by the name of Makoto Nitahara, and then his vision was to kind of create this tropical gardens way back in the early 1970’s. He was issued a Special Permit. The project never really got off the ground, and then subsequently was purchased by a Japanese group. The person’s name was Mr. Sorimachi. And, coincidently, he also owned the building across the street where my office is situated. So, it was Sorimachi’s vision that eventually kind of evolved to where it is today. They developed the garden fully, and what they also wanted to do was to have a—at that point in time, you know golf courses was kind of like a rage among the Japanese investors, and so he was issued a Use Permit to, for the construction of a 9-hole pitch and putt golf course in that area. Subsequently, Mr. Sorimachi passed away and so, it was sold to another party. That party then abandoned the notion of the pitch and putt golf course and then came in for the one-acre rezoning of which, you know, we’re talking about today. That previous developer/landowner had a proposed subdivision. They had construction plans prepared, but was never fully developed. And then along came the current owner, Miss Helen Koo. So, she bought out the whole property and her--in May of 2012, at that point in time, the focus, you know her focus understandably was not the real estate portion but as much as restoring Nani Mau to what it was, like how we, you know, how we used to remember and what it is today. So, she devoted a lot of attention and provided a lot of funds to restoring the gardens and the operation. Now, that that’s kind of like in the back of her, her focus now is just now trying to do the remaining subdivision, and so this is kind of like where we are right now. Unfortunately, 4 EXHIBIT A because of her attention, was diverted to the restoration of the Nani Mau Gardens, you know this thing kind of like slipped by. So, she did hire a different engineering firm, Engineering Partners, to do a revision, you know, to kind of like fulfill the vision of the original developer and what her, as modified by her current vision. So, the current subdivision layout has to be slightly modified just to make sure that it does not adversely affect the operations of the Nani Mau Gardens. Obviously, that’s gonna take some time, and so, this five-year additional time that she will have to address all of the subdivision requirements, you know, would, would be very appreciative. One of the things that the Zoning Code, and to answer the Chair’s question, is that there is, the zoning condition came, the zoning approval, however, for the 25 lots did, was done with a number of conditions, and one of the conditions related to, as the staff mentioned, payment of the fair share. So, there was an adjustment on the fair share and also the fulfillment of the affordable housing obligation. So, specifically, in terms of the affordable housing obligation, according to Chapter 11, the requirement that you have to, you have to—the developer is obligated to fulfill 20 percent of the total requirements so if hypothetically, if you’re, the project is 25 units, so, the obligation, affordable housing obligation, is five affordable housing credits. And as staff mentioned, you know, there are different ways that you can address the five affordable housing credit requirement. It could be on-site, off-site of payment of fees in lieu of. So, Ms. Koo has asked me to find whether there are ways that we can address the affordable housing requirement off- site, and that’s kind of one of my tasks and to be able to do that obviously is going to take some time and before you can get final subdivision approval in addition to having to put in all the roadway, your water system and drainage system, you also need to fulfill the affordable housing and the fair share requirement. And, we believe that the five--within the five-year period, that should be ample time to enable her to address all of this requirements. MIYASATO: Any questions, Commissioners? If not, I just wanted to follow up with that Condition H, yeah. I guess for me, I would like to see homes on the ground, especially in Hilo. I think the Big Island is probably one of the only counties that has failed to provide median income affordable homes for our residents. You know, we have the low income, but you know, I started off with a median income house on Maui, and I never thought I’d be able to afford a home on Maui. So, you know, for young couples starting out, I think it’s a great opportunity to have that affordable homes with the ten-year buy back. You know, that whole concept, it works. It’s a good thing, and you know, for several administrations now, everyone’s been doing the in- lieu fee, and we don’t have any ground—homes on the ground for our residents, especially on this side of the Island. I think the one in Waikoloa is finally going to have a chance to be completed. Other than that, you know, there’s nothing that’s been done except in-lieu fees, so yeah, it’d be nice to have—I think it’s a 15-mile radius—you have to do the off-site within that radius. You know, it’d be nice to have something on the ground. Other than that, you know, I’m in favor of the extension. I just would like to see that done. FUKE: Thank you. 5 EXHIBIT A MIYASATO: If nothing further, thank you. We have no testifiers for this. Is there anyone that would like to testify on this application? If not, can I have a motion to close public testimony? IKEDA: Motion to close testimony. MOSES: Second. MIYASATO: Motion by Commissioner Ikeda. Second by Commissioner Moses. All in favor? COMMISSIONERS: Aye. MIYASATO: Any opposed? I call a close to the public testimony of this application. Commissioners, any discussion on this? If not, I’ll accept a motion. IKEDA: Mr. Chairman, I’ll make the motion. I move that a favorable recommendation be forwarded to the County Council on the application to amend REZ 792 based on the Planning Director’s findings, recommendations, and proposed conditions which shall be adopted. MOSES: Second. MIYASATO: I have a motion by Commissioner Ikeda. Second by Commissioner Moses. Any discussion on the motion? You can call the roll. JACKSON: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Commissioner Ikeda? IKEDA: Aye. JACKSON: Commissioner Moses? MOSES: Aye. JACKSON: Commissioner Dela Cruz? DELA CRUZ: Aye. JACKSON: Commissioner Heaukulani? HEAUKULANI: Aye. JACKSON: Commissioner Henkel? HENKEL: Aye. JACKSON: And Chair Miyasato. 6 EXHIBIT A MIYASATO: Aye. JACKSON: Okay, the motion passes six, zero. MIYASATO: You’ll be notified in writing. The discussion ended at 9:17 a.m. Respectfully submitted, Sarah Y. Hata-Finley, Secretary Windward Planning Commission 7 EXHIBIT A