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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016-09-28 BDHRA Minutes BANYAN DRIVE HAWAI‘I REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY COUNTY OF HAWAI‘I MINUTES September 28, 2016 The Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency met in the County of Hawai‘i, Aupuni Center Conference Room, 101 Pauahi Street, Hilo Hawai‘i, with Chairman Brian DeLima presiding. AGENCY MEMBERS PRESENT: Mary Begier, Brian DeLima, Elmer Gorospe, and Sigmund Zane. AGENCY MEMBERS ABSENT AND EXCUSED: Barry Taniguchi ALSO PRESENT: Duane Kanuha (Planning Director), Amy Self (Deputy Corporation Counsel), Daryn Arai (Planning Program Manager), Lucas Mead (Staff Planner), Christian Kay (Staff Planner), Garrett Smith (Redevelopment Coordinator), and Kim Tanaka (Secretary). A quorum was present with four members in attendance. The meeting was called to order by Chairman DeLima at 1:46 p.m. At this time Chairman DeLima opened the floor to receive public testimony. Chairman DeLima, hearing no objections, approved the agenda as circulated. STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC There were 21 people from the public in attendance. DELIMA: We have four testifiers who have signed up to testify. We’ll first call on Donald Inouye. Go ahead Mr. Inouye. INOUYE: I’ve provided written testimony, but first, thank you very much, Brian DeLima to hear me, and also to the other members of the committee. I have made five different scenarios and I’ll be very brief on each one of them if you want to take each one of them at a time. The first one is the resort expansion location. Now I understand this is where if my hotel, Reed’s Bay, is to be closed up and demolished and made into a park area, then I have a choice possibly to construct another hotel on the Banyan Drive area. Is that correct? DELIMA: This is your opportunity to give testimony. We’re not here to answer questions. INOUYE: Okay, but I‒‒question I have is this resort expansion area, the location, is this where I will have an opportunity to build a new hotel, possibly? DELIMA: Okay Mr. Inouye, I think it’s important for you to ask whatever questions you want to ask as part of your testimony. Staff is here, they’ll listen to your testimony and when they come time to review the revised plan, I would ask that they address some of the points and questions that you are raising today. That would be a better practice because they’re in a better position to answer them, rather than us. INOUYE: I understand exactly now. Okay. I wasn’t really, kind of, tuned into that. DELIMA: You’re doing a good job. You have written testimony, you’re asking smart questions, so I want to make sure you have a full opportunity to ask whatever questions you want. The staff are taking notes and they’ll be able to address them when they make their presentation. INOUYE: Very good, very good. Okay, the subject is the resort expansion location to be, has to be, on the ocean side. In other words, any new hotel that is to be built must be on the ocean side or ocean front, or have a bay view. All hotels located on Banyan Drive must be located on the ocean front to show the beautiful pictures of Hilo bay on their internet website, or through any international hotel room internet sales company to get the business, to stay in business. I’d like to add on that. If I did not have an ocean view for my hotel, I would not be in business today because I sell all my rooms on the internet. I do get a certain amount of local business, but not enough to keep me in business. Next paragraph, there has to be a level playing field for all hotels on Banyan Drive as to having a bay view for their hotel. Hilo Hawaiian, Naniloa, Reed’s Bay Hotel presently all have the Hilo bay views to use in all their advertising. I, Don Inouye, would have been forced to close my business as a hotel if I were not located on the ocean side. On your proposal, location on Tomorrow Land Use scenario needs to be changed from the golf course to an ocean front. Question; is it not the main reason for the Redevelopment Agency existence to create a beautiful Banyan Drive area and attract more tourists? Is it not the sole responsibility for each hotel to promote their hotel and bring the tourist to the area? The Volcano National Park Hotel has a captive tourist trade from the volcano and the National Park. The Mauna Kea Beach Hotel and the Prince Hāpuna Hotel \[sic\] also have a captive tourist trade because of one of the most beautiful white sand beaches. Does this subject need to be discussed? Is there any question? Are we only looking at the tourist side of this development or are we concerned with the business owner side also? End of statement on the first one. Shall I proceed, or anyone have any questions to ask me? DELIMA: You know, Mr. Inouye, I’m going to let you testify and just to advise you, we do have suggested time limits but frankly we haven’t adopted the rules yet, so technically there is no time limit, but please use your common sense. This is not a filibuster okay. Go ahead though. Page 2 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes INOUYE: Okay. I will move on. The automobile circulation, the way it’s under projection is okay, but what about the blighted Banyan Drive street thoroughfare from Ken’s to Suisan itself? The thoroughfare from start to ending is a disgrace. It is where the blight starts and ends on Banyan Drive area peninsula. It is not the buildings causing the blight per se as such; it’s the evasive growth underdrive. The blighted Banyan Drive entrance begins near Ken’s Pancake House. The beautiful royal palm trees lining the streets are highlighted by the unkempt, uncut grass, fronds always on the ground, weeds and evasive trees and other growth on the golf course side of the road, as well as rubbish. As you drive along, the blight continues because of all the banyan trees have evasive growth throughout their branches. These trees all need an arbonist \[sic\] to clean them up, to show their beauty and majestic growth. The golf course beautiful greens are all blocked and hidden from view by all the evasive trees, weeds, and growth as one drives from one end of the drive to the other. Never mind the rubbish or the broken fences. Next one. I have a picture of beloved banyans. To me this is one of the most important features that needs to be handled. Each banyan tree and their legacy on Banyan Drive peninsula must be treated and protected in the same way as buildings on the national register program for historic buildings. How many banyan trees are to be removed because of the redevelopment plan? Is there no need to have any of these trees removed? A plan must be formulated to provide maintenance and promote the legacy for each and every banyan tree on the peninsula. This would include a brochure and a guide to where the location of each tree has been planted by the dignitary. The trees must be attended to by an arborist, which will remove all the evasive growth which will reveal the true beauty and majestic growth of each tree. How can this program be promoted and continued for eternity? That’s a good question. Do you know where is Babe Ruth, Amelia Earhart, President Franklin Roosevelt, President Richard Nixon, Princess Kawānanakoa, Louis Armstrong, or many more dignitary banyan trees are located? The next item which I have that I would like to bring out is the pedestrian circulation. We need a walk-the-walk path on the entire ocean front. In other words, this would‒‒should be on the entire ocean front perimeter in front of all the hotels and our parks on Banyan Drive. You can walk the entire length of Waikīkī Beach and in front of all the hotels, and why not here on Banyan Drive peninsula? Coconut Island bridge is used every day to get to the Coconut Island by tourists and certainly this walk-the-walk path will be used by tourists as well as local visitors as well. To me this will be a beautiful walk to take with the view of all the shoreline, oceanfront, some turtles, sailboats, tugboats, the cruise ships, canoe teams practicing, stand up paddlers, especially a view of the hotels as well. Why not a walk-the-walk path? The next item, which is my final item, which might hit some people in the gut; this is concerning the community and cultural center. To me it should not be constructed for many reasons. It is being built primarily for the community use and will not help to any great degree to help increase the occupancy rate of hotels on Banyan Drive. The cultural Page 3 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes center will do away with the golf course which is needed for two basic reasons, the greens will accentuate the Banyan Drive along the way from our royal palm trees at the entrance by Ken’s to the end of our Banyan Drive by Suisan. And the other reason is that most hotel complex have a golf course to advertise and utilize, we’re talking about all these hotels on Banyan Drive. Even though it’s a nine hole, I do have (inaudible) tourist that come in and they participate there. All tourist visiting the Hilo area already have reservations and their time is limited and taken up by their site seeing activities; they’re not going to have time to go to the community center. They have priorities on where they want to visit. The activities at the cultural center will interfere with the already congested traffic and parking of the hotel guests and future of existing restaurants. This will be especially true during Merrie Monarch week, or any other community activity that may have come up. I thank you very much for your participation. DELIMA: Thank you for your testimony. Any questions? Okay, thank you for coming, Mr. Inouye. I appreciate you providing us the written testimony. Okay and we have next, Patty Heidenfeldt. HEIDENFELDT: Good afternoon. At first I want to thank you for this opportunity. Want to let you briefly know a little bit about myself, I’m fourth generation on the Inouye side from O‘ahu. I have many, many family who are Hawaiian that have been on the islands for multiple generations. Having grown up in Waikīkī as a child in the 50s and taking my little bamboo mat out on the beach and laying there and watching the elderly do their Tai Chi was something that was very important to me. Today I go there and it’s bumper to bumper traffic, I can’t even get 15 miles without being tied up in an area that I don’t really want to be; I want to get to where I’m going. I hate to see this island turn into O‘ahu. I think what makes this island so beautiful is the way it is today, and I think it needs to be cleaned up, made more beautiful, but not necessarily turned into a big resort side of the island. This island has a lot to offer. Banyan Drive, specifically the proposals that you all are showing on your maps, if you have an opportunity to drive down Banyan Drive, I encourage you to do so. My uncle has taken it upon himself to get into the banyan tree that entrances our hotel and has cleaned out all of the overgrowth that was in it. You can now see through the banyan tree, you can see the beautiful blue skies, the branches extend out and it looks gorgeous. It took very little effort on his part to get that done; it was done in, I think, a day and a half. And we have a wonderful arborist who is willing to get in there and do that to the rest of the trees. We have talked about getting together a non-profit organization to possibly do that for the trees on that drive, but I want to reiterate what my uncle has said about making a walk that the tourists can walk along that place. When they come to our hotel they say, ‘Where can I walk to eat?’ ‘Where can I walk to see something’ and they’re limited to one side of the road. So if they could have a walk to all of the Banyan Drive, see Amelia Earhart, see Babe Ruth, see all those trees, King George, there are so many trees that people don’t even know exist there. I would like to see that cleaned up. So I just wanted to make that really brief and I also wanted to reiterate the fact that when I go holoholo, I look for a beach and a hotel that I can see the ocean, and it is very important to tourists. They call and they Page 4 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes request right away, ‘I want ocean view.’ For them to not have an ocean view limits our ability to succeed. So I would ask that when you are considering this plan to beautify Banyan Drive, that you consider the hotels being on the ocean and having ocean view, and hopefully not encroaching on that beautiful Lili‘uokalani Park. Thank you. DELIMA: Next we’ll have Michael Combs. COMBS: Thank you Brian. DELIMA: Good afternoon. COMBS: Thank you for allowing me to speak today. First I want to thank the Planning Department and the State, Gordon, and the cooperation in coming up with a very exciting General Plan and for the board, the Redevelopment Board, for all the time and effort you’ve come up with. As a resident of 121 Banyan Drive, I want to speak in favor of the proposal two, which includes the language for mixed use condominium. Tailgating on the concept that Hilo is one of the healthiest places in the world to live, for a variety of th different reasons, the classification of being designated a Blue Zone, one of the 20 healthy places with the longest‒‒longevity in the country. If we build on that, the direction for tourism to use a mixed use condominium for rehabilitation for the recovery of major operations with residents, long term residents with the snowbirds, is a very viable project. That concludes my presentation. Thank you very much. DELIMA: Any questions? Thank you, Mr. Combs. Next we have Carl Oguss. OGUSS: Good afternoon. Carl Oguss, I also live on Banyan Drive. First I want to make a few comments about the process that this has been through. It is interesting to note little decisions like when during the day during the week are meetings scheduled, because the scheduling of meetings during the time of day when you know many, many people, the majority of employed people, are not able to attend or give any kind of input at all speaks. It indicates the intention to have that result, the result of excluding their input. On that theme of having meetings like this that so intensely impact this community, either as taxpayers or as local residents who somehow are directly affected by the development of Banyan Drive, we have a really serious issue of when exactly was what we’re being proposed decided? I know that this is not the forum for questions, but I would guess that if you were to randomly call 100 citizens and ask them what they would find more useful in exactly this kind of process, question and answer sessions where real input before decisions are made can occur, or what’s called nemawashi in Japan, that’s an opportunity to say whatever you want to say and then be similarly ignored because it doesn’t matter, the decisions have already been made. This kind of process deserved input. It deserved input first on the issue of whether or not resort development was going to continue. That shouldn’t be taken as a fait accompli and I think you are gonna face legal challenges to that. We’re being told that either plan, and it’s gonna be one of the two, is gonna be promoting the private industry on Banyan Drive. Now, that would be Page 5 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes responsible and acceptable, absolutely, only if the cost benefit analysis showed that the citizens, especially of our county, but beyond, would be best served by that investment. In other words, if your plan would actually make the citizens coffers so much richer than any other alternative and not only return more money but had better overall impact, the difference being investments in medicine and education don’t immediately produce dollar results, they produce quality of life results. We are a community who cannot afford enough medical technicians. We’re famous for it. I’m a psychologist. We have the embarrassment in Hawai‘i County of being the county in the United States least well served by licensed psychologists. Tremendous need. If you go to the courts you see what happens to these people when they don’t get therapy. They become a management problem for everybody. We have needs in our schools. We’re short several hundred teachers. That’s ultimately a matter of money, ultimately a matter of spending; it’s a matter of investment. What is it that has justified this rush to redevelop resorts? This isn’t a question and answer session, but I’ll put the question to you, and if it’s only answered at the end of the process as part of, ‘we responded to what people said,’ as opposed to, ‘we gave it serious consideration.’ That, I think, would be very unfortunate. But we really need to know whether or not Banyan Drive needs expansive citizen input. For one thing any of us who looks up the definition of blight as it’s used when it refers to developed areas, will tell you that, at most, the Japanese restaurant at the Naniloa, the one between it and Country Club, that was blighted. The pool behind it, blighted. The out buildings, the three of them, blighted. Country Club, blighted‒‒no. Reed’s Bay, blighted‒‒under what fraudulent misrepresentation is full-capacity use considered blight? I put it to you that you are trying to force down the throats of this community a plan that is reckless, will put us into tremendous debt at a time when we don’t have money, certainly not for that. If we had money, even money to borrow under deficit spending, I think our community would rather see it go to the creation of jobs, the creation of affordable housing, improved education, improved medical care for a start. Way ahead of helping private industry. And you guys told us last time you had no cost benefit analysis, you had no responsible comparison of what this would ever cost. We’re going to need entirely new utilities for all of this; not just patch work, new. That’s an expense to the taxpayer. You’re going to authorize because you feel it pays us back. You need to know the answer to how. So I’m going to ask you guys to publish a cost benefit analysis that justifies this decision or face a legal challenge to whether you acted with gross negligence or willfulness conduct. You cannot recommend something you have no idea what it costs. And beyond that, please add into the cost benefit analysis what it costs to relocate about 400 families. We need affordable housing in this community desperately. Currently there are about 400 families living on Banyan Drive, at least. So they don’t matter. The tourist matters. In fact, let us tear down their buildings because the tourists want to see the nice water. Very nice. DELIMA: Thank you very much. Any questions? We call on Peter Kubota. KUBOTA: Thank you for having me and allowing me to testify here. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for all of your work that you guys do. As a lifelong resident of Page 6 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes Hilo, I wholeheartedly support this project and think that it is long needed. I’m here to speak on behalf of Hilo Bayfront Trails of which I am the president, and it’s a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. I just wanted to give you an update on where we’re at because exciting things are happening and then it flows right into this Banyan Drive Redevelopment as the next phases, so. This is our plan map. Sorry for you folks back there, you only can see one side of this. As you can see, the orange lines are what was master planned in the Hilo Bayfront Trails plan and was approved by SMA. So we are ready to go with this. This also includes a loop along Banyan Drive as it is currently configured. Now, whatever you folks decide on your master planning of your map, you know, I was just sitting here getting ready to testify and I remembered that it was almost exactly 10 years ago in 2006 that we were sitting in this very room talking about the dream of a trail here. It was a meeting organized by then Mayor, Harry Kim, and we had all the stakeholders in this room and it was a really exciting time because at this point when you guys are master planning, you can dream big. And what I asked for at the last, or last-last meeting was that you guys consider implementing as a trail on the map a trail around the outside of the resorts as Mr. Inouye said. I see that you’re looking at park space throughout that whole area and I think that’s wonderful, but the beauty of your guys process right now is, this is the plan, this is the dream, this is the dream that we did back 10 years ago and I want to tell you guys that this dream is really coming true. We are working with the County of Hawai‘i on phase I. And I’m going to put down this microphone to show you where phase I is, but phase I is scheduled to start next week Monday, October 3rd. It’s been surveyed out, the contractor’s ready to go, we cleared historic preservation, our SMA was done long time ago. We’re ready to actually dig dirt and start on phase I. Banyan Drive was going to be our phase II, but when this Banyan Drive Redevelopment Agency came up, then Banyan Drive is a little bit up in the air. We hope that you guys will put down the plan and if it is ready for our phase II, that’ll be our phase II. If it is not, we got other places we can go. And I’ll show you in Wailoa State Park what could be our phase II, and working with DLNR and the State Parks guys, they have their phase I going. So I’m gonna give you a quick update, and folks behind I can show you guys the map after if you guys are interested. So I’ll put this down. Mr. Kubota proceeded to show the Agency the location of phase I of their project using a map he provided. He pointed out landmarks and the location of the planned trails. He also briefly mentioned their funding sources, and added that they will be fundraising for phase II. The estimated completion time for phase I of their project is December 2016. The trails will be 12 feet wide, concrete paths, with a stripe down the middle. Phase I of the State Park section will begin at the small boat harbors, past the Wailoa Pavilion 1, 2, and 3, and go back toward Waiākea Villas. Mr. Kubota asked that the Agency consider putting a trail along the ocean side of the resorts, between Coconut Island and Hilo Hawaiian, and asked that it be put in the plan. He thanked the Agency for their service and for their support of Hilo Bayfront Trails. Page 7 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes DELIMA: Thank you. Any questions? Okay, we’ve also received written testimony from Ed Bushor, Tower Development, Inc. We’ve also received written testimony from Russell Tsuji, and we’ve also received testimony from R. C. Leimana Pelton. That concludes the testimony of those who have signed up for today’s meeting. We’ll move onto business of the Agency. BUSINESS OF AGENCY 1. Review, deliberation, and action on draft Rules of Practice and Procedure for the Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency. DELIMA: I understand that the draft has been circulated. Is there a motion to approve? BEGIER: So moved. DELIMA: Is there a second? GOROSPE: Second. DELIMA: It’s been moved and second. I just want to‒‒the pages are not numbered on mine. When we first had our draft, we had discussion that there should be a time limit for public testimony, and I noticed that the draft that has been circulated today does not provide for public testimony at our meeting. So I think it’s important that we indicate that statements from the public shall be scheduled at each of our meetings and that the members of the public shall have up to so many minutes to testify. I forgot what time we set the last time. Three minutes? Okay. So Madam Deputy Corporation Counsel, is there a suggested place you think we should place that? I’m looking at section ‒‒ SELF: It should be under the‒‒ DELIMA: Agency. 1.5? C is meetings. SELF: It should be somewhere around the, where it has meetings. DELIMA: So the Chair will entertain a motion to amend Section 1.5 to include a provision that statements from the public shall be provided for at all our Agency meetings and that the public members shall have three minutes to address the Agency. We can leave it to the Deputy Corporation Counsel to place it in the appropriate section. Is there a motion to so amend? BEGIER: So moved. DELIMA: Moved by Ms. Begier. Is there a second? ZANE: Second. Page 8 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes SELF: Is this your public hearing on the minutes? MEAD: We had the draft rules available at the‒‒we had it agendized for last month, the meeting got canceled. But we did have review of the draft rules prior to this. I do believe that we did have in that draft rules the three minutes. I’m not sure why that did not make this one; it should have been the same rules and I would have to follow up because I’m pretty sure that that was the comment before we discussed the time limits and we did settle on three minutes, or as the Chair’s discretion. Correct. So we did have that in there. I apologize if for some reason‒‒the last time I showed you was the track changes, I don’t know if something got goofed up there, but I can follow through with that and see where we’re at because it should be in there. DELIMA: I remember us talking about it and I thought we voted on it, so if we could, we have the amendment today because I know today was the date‒‒ Mr. Mead projected the revised draft rules for the Agency members, providing a copy of the corrected rules. It was determined that the printed copy given to Chairman DeLima was not the corrected, final version. DELIMA: Okay, so we don’t need to do the amendment, we just have to approve that one. Okay, so Ms. Begier, we ask that her motion be withdrawn and second consents. So we’re back on approving the main motion, which is to adopt the rules of practice and procedures as posted, which includes the provision for public testimony. BEGIER: And I so move. GOROSPE: I’ll second. DELIMA: It’s been moved and second that we adopt those rules and procedures which included the public testimony provision. Any further discussion? Okay seeing none, all those in favor say aye. ALL MEMBERS: Aye. DELIMA: Opposed say nay. Motion is carried. At this time Chairman DeLima directed the Agency to the second item of the agenda under Business of Agency. 2. Review, deliberation, and action on draft conceptual maps for the redevelopment of the Banyan Drive area based on public comments and recommendations received during the informational meetings held on June 28, 2016 and July 5, 2016, along with comments and recommendations received from agency members. Page 9 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes DELIMA: I just wanted to make sure the record is clear. The informational meetings that were held on June 28 and July 5, were those meetings outside of the work hours? MEAD: Yeah, those were in the afternoon, I believe they started at 5 pm. DELIMA: Okay. And the newspaper article that highlighted the original, the first draft, that appeared in the public‒‒in the newspaper as well? MEAD: Yes, I believe that was in the newspaper. I would have to double check. Also on our mail out, we did mail out two times. One time when the first redevelopment plan came out we mailed out to all property owners within Banyan Drive. I do have our contact information on there, and invite any comments that way as well. DELIMA: My recollection is that we had a‒‒the plans were in the newspaper, highlighted on the front page, and then subsequent to that newspaper article, the informational meetings occurred outside of the work hours, during the day, and then based upon the public’s participation at the informational meetings and the testimony at the public, revisions to the plan was made, and then further revisions were made, and then today’s additional revisions. So you if you could track, as you indicated in your presentation, so the record reflects that this is not the first and only meeting we’ve had. MEAD: Yes, yes, that’s correct. At this time Mr. Mead provided a presentation which consisted of the overview of the Agency, a map of Banyan Drive today, a map of properties designated as “Blighted Area” in Banyan Drive Peninsula, the plan development, and conceptual land use plans version 1, initial changes, version 2 scenario 1, and version 2 scenario 2. See Exhibit A. MEAD: The first part of the step, how we kind of developed our first part of the plan, was to look at the existing plans in the areas that were in effect. Our last meeting covered the various plans that went into forming the very first plan that was considered. It was sent out to the public and presented to the Agency. We had a composite plan here, and through our public outreach efforts, collaboration working with the Agency members here, we developed a plan that accommodated a modest degree of the resort and commercial components, identifying that the resort sector in the east side of, along the east side of Hawai‘i is Banyan Drive. We did that also‒‒we do identify that there’s to be a strong cultural and community focus. We showed that initially through the identification of a community cultural center. And lastly, the goal was to preserve and provide for public accessible open space and use of our natural resources. So the initial conceptual land use plan that was presented, and was sent out to the public for comment, is this plan right here. Page 10 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes Mr. Mead reviewed the original conceptual land use plan at this time. MEAD: So after our meetings and our consultations, we had a couple changes that we’re proposing that we were going to execute for the revised conceptual plan. The first was being to remove the hotel from the location in the gardens. After talking with some of the people who were really concerned about the hotel in the gardens, what it was is the reason that the hotel was located here, I think it was misunderstood that the hotel was going in the existing Lili‘uokalani gardens. It was actually a realignment of the road, to put the road makai. So this actually, here, what was not so obvious was a realignment of Banyan Drive. The next step was to expand this resort node between Naniloa and Hilo Hawaiian to retain the resort mixed use for existing resort and residential areas, to at least provide that as an option. Move the location of the new ship terminal to a location identified in the harbor’s master plan, which is moved over to the right hand side, towards Keaukaha, and to constrain the size of this community cultural center. Here, it’s quite a large mass and so trying to, kind of, putting some limits on it was also a recommendation, and of course to include Lihiwai. It was left out here; Lihiwai is the road, right now vehicular, that runs along or through the outside there of the gardens. And lastly, what I mentioned earlier, was removing the Ken’s House of Pancakes corner from the plan as it’s not part of the redevelopment. With the inclusion of the resort bubble here, we got rid of the kai pool or removed it from the plan. Mr. Mead continued the presentation, reviewing the revised conceptual land use plan. He provided two scenarios. The main difference in the scenarios is the extension of the primary resort node which encompasses the area to the east, currently occupied by the smaller hotel/mixed use condo uses. The first scenario shows open park space, the second scenario shows the expansion of the primary resort use. MEAD: So what I’ll highlight now are some of the changes between the two plans. There’s ten major changes that we should acknowledge. The first being the removal there, that yellow star’s the Ken’s block that was removed from the old plan. We also acknowledge instead of having it as proposed park space, anyone who’s driven by it now sees the extent of it’s‒‒how it’s progressing, so it’s coming along quite quickly, and so we just acknowledge that as the Kuawa Sports Fields development. We don’t put it in there as proposed anymore; it’s essentially existing. On the commercial node that was on the mauka side of Lihiwai‒‒you can see that the old map had a commercial node extending all the way up to Kamehameha on the mauka side of Lihiwai. So we did remove that, and we instead included this kind of mixed commercial node which includes the existing ice house, the existing HELCO station, as well as going up and capturing kind of the Hilo Bay Café, so kind of keeping these uses here, identifying them as commercial. The next change was we no longer showed Banyan Drive in this version as being realigned. So the existing flow of Banyan Drive, or the existing layout of Banyan Drive, comes on this side right over here and you can see that it runs this way all the way through‒‒here’s Banyan Way that connects right by Ice Pond. So the‒‒originally it did Page 11 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes show the Banyan Drive realignment essentially on the inside of the hotel, or the hotel expansion area. Finally, we also included in this portion Lihiwai, just in the connectivity. We tried to show some of the existing connectivity there. It does identify it; we’re not picking a mode of transportation that’s appropriate for it, we’re just identifying where it falls on the map. We have the resort‒‒we’re calling it a resort expansion node, we’re essentially identifying that if the need for transient accommodations is greater than could be filled in this kind of primary resort node that this could be an area that would be appropriate for expansion. We’re calling this area right here, this side on the mauka side of Banyan Drive, we have it labeled as resort expansion. We do identify this top portion here, so again we’re‒‒it captures Hilo Hawaiian, Naniloa, the Uncle Billy’s Pagoda property, as well as the privately owned parcel on the right hand side of Naniloa. We identify this as kind of the primary resort, being that it is where the existing resort occurs, and what we have here is that if there is a need for more rooms than can be fit into this area, then this could be a logical place for an expansion of such use. So that’s what that resort expansion is. We do have again, we did initially‒‒the Uncle Billy’s portion was in the first version showed it as a park; this version shows the continuing resort mixed use capturing that property as well, as well as some frontage commercial. This is in recognition of the commercial type uses that exist in front of Hilo Hawaiian right now. This star right here identifies‒‒because it was not on the first one, that commercial frontage again. There’s‒‒if you look at Banyan Drive here, there’s some small commercial type uses and structures that kind of front the road there, and so we acknowledge that as being commercial. We did constrain the size of the community cultural center a bit. We do show that it may have‒‒there’s no set design on it or anything, but we did kind of reduce that size to make it a little bit more in-scale with the size of the peninsula and the size of the other developments. We constrained the size of the commercial that was fronting Kamehameha Avenue. The first version showed more commercial along the front side over here. Where we have tentatively drew a line right there is the old entrance of into Waiākea Town; there’s still a remnant road there and so we showed this commercial kind of fronting, mostly on Banyan Drive and a small portion along Kamehameha Avenue. And finally we show the movement there of Pier 5 to its location as identified in the Harbor’s master plan. At this time Mr. Mead called upon Director Kanuha to provide clarification for the changes. KANUHA: Thank you Luke. You folks have any questions about the proposed changes, I’ll be happy to answer that. GOROSPE: I do. What happened to those private properties ‒‒with this plan here? What’s going to happen with the private properties? KANUHA: They get integrated into the plan by either uses, and as you can see, most of them are integrated for some type of use, assuming that this is the version that the Agency chooses to adopt. But what I want to mention to the Agency is that, as you know, we had to cancel your last meeting because of the storm threat, but what happens Page 12 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes between your meetings is based on your comments, your observations, input we get from the public who attend, either by written or by verbal testimony. Then what we do is we reassess all that information, we go out, we make efforts to get answers from either industry folks or business community, things of that nature so that we have some more foundation before come to you with our next round. Because we actually had two months to continue to refine this plan, we’ve had more opportunity to discuss some of what we’re doing here with the industry, the visitor industry, what they’re‒‒what they feel the visitor unit requirements need to be in order to get Banyan Drive up to a capacity where the airlines themselves can consider adding additional lift to Hilo to support that. We also did a walking audit with the two primary principals for the Blue Zones program that conduct the built urban environment component for Banyan Drive. So we’ve integrated some of those concepts along, for pedestrian ways, ways to perhaps reduce the speed on Banyan Drive, different alternatives for parking‒‒in other words, for example, why take up developable property for parking, why not just put it on street, things of that nature. If you narrow down the streets to slow down traffic, that additional streetway could be used for pedestrian purposes or parking, different kinds. So we had that tour, I think you were all invited, you weren’t able to make it. So it’s things of that nature that we’ve done. But what I want to say is, you know, one of the proposals that came to the Agency, came to us and the Agency, in response to these plans, these two versions of plans, was a proposal by the current lessee of the Naniloa Hotel and the golf course property; I think you folks have that in your packet. What happened is that proposal‒‒it’s an interesting proposal, it’s a pretty straightforward depiction of what that land owner’s view of what he thought should happen at Banyan Drive was, and so early this morning he and the Mayor and some of us met in the Mayor’s office to kind of get some clarification on what was going on behind that proposal, what the thought process was, so on and so forth. What came out of that actually, is a hand-shake agreement between the leaseholder of the golf course property and the County to actually try and structure a memorandum of agreement whereby the County could participate in a revitalization effort for portions of his property as well as Banyan Drive as a whole. So it’s kind of a package deal; the Mayor made a commitment that if he got an agreement with the land owner, that the County would initiate these efforts. It has really nothing to do with the plan, or the Agency, and anything. It grew out of this meeting to describe what he felt would work, and he basically said, ‘Yeah, you know, your map shows a line dividing the property into two portions,’ he’s basically committed to allocating that whole top half into this initial effort, which basically is really consistent with what we’re trying to accomplish here. The second thing is that some of the discussions on the other retail component got to be quite interesting because what it involves is some ways to actually finance some of these projects. So what I’m going to ask the Agency to do is to take a look at the two versions we have here, but not really take an action on it because what we want to do is we want to vet some of the ideas that came out of this morning’s meeting, which may or may not change the plan at all, very significantly. But what it will do is it will provide you with a better idea of how this program can actually be implemented. I’ve already been in Page 13 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes discussion with the State. The Mayor has directed me to work with the leaseholder to get this MOU out and going so the County can allocate our resources. Basically what it is, is what testimony you heard today. It’s a clean-up of all the banyan trees. By the way, most of those banyan‒‒almost all of the banyan trees are within the County right-of-way. It’s not within the leasehold portion. Further to the Bayfront Trails component, their representative was with us on that walking audit so we got a better idea of what they’re thinking in terms of how they would implement some of their components. Let me see what else. DELIMA: I got some short questions. KANUHA: I think that’s about it. DELIMA: I think it’s important that everyone understands that the Naniloa lease which includes the golf course is a long lease. How many years is that lease? I know it’s‒‒ KANUHA: Fifty-five. DELIMA: Okay so quite frankly, unless there’s a memorandum of agreement by the leaseholder, none of the ideas of a convention or community project would be able to be done unless for some reason they default on their lease. So I think it’s important for the public to understand that having that land hold‒‒leaseholder cooperation is important in order to implement anything in the short term. The other thing I wanted to comment was if at all possible, I agree with Mr. Kubota about the idea of trying to, at least put as close to the shoreline as possible, the trail aspect of it because I think he hits the nail on the head by saying at least if you have it on your master plan that if at all possible they’ll try to implement it. KANUHA: Right, and that’s precisely the reason we left that green strip fronting all the properties over there. DELIMA: And then I like the idea of the common sense approach to the ice house and the HELCO property. Quite frankly, it needs to be viable in order for the land owner to be able to make use of their property. So I think that is a good solution for the long term aspect of it. I’m not certain what HELCO wants to do with it, and I’m not certain what the land owner for the ice house, but I think it’s important that the Planning Department engage in some discussions, but I like the concept of at least giving those land owners some value so that it doesn’t become blighted. If you don’t give them value, then it’s going to be blighted. I think that was rather ingenious to be frank. And Mr. Inouye asked a question about the‒‒originally the plan was where the Reed’s Bay Hotel all the way to Country Club would be just park. Now under this revision it’s condo, mixed use. So although they are all leases, the ability to have a condominium mixed use is still available for the present structures? Page 14 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes KANUHA: Correct. That’s a concept we’re advocating there. Again, there was some sentiment for leaving that area as open space, which is why we provided both alternatives for you folks to think about. We, and I in particular, have had some pretty lengthy discussions with the industry folks in terms of what level of inventory does Banyan Drive need to be, and its always been a huge number of rooms. Okay well, that’s probably not gonna work for the marketplace, the space we got available, so what we’ve tried to do is we’ve tried to make sure that there’s enough alternatives here. The alternatives you see here, that hotel, that freestanding proposed hotel site, what we did is we took, basically, the acreage for Hilo Hawaiian. That gave us some density, what size hotel could fit into that purple area. So that gives you some hotel. The original version did not have Uncle Billy’s into the potential hotel mix. We felt it’s a natural‒‒Hilo Hawaiian on one side, Naniloa on the other side, but it also doesn’t preclude whoever comes in to lease that property for some resort-related use. We’ve had some discussions with conceptually perhaps razing the property, creating a park space in the interim. And then over time, when it goes out for lease, for bid, the adjoining properties, either the Naniloa or Hilo Hawaiian or in concert, could acquire that property for additional parking. Actually, one of the concepts I’ve heard in the discussion is additional parking and a conference center on the second floor. So what you would have is kind of an alternative conference community center, ocean oriented in this particular case. So our program leaves those options open without saying it has to be one or the other. But I think basically what this scenario does is it leaves room for maybe another six, seven hundred rooms possible potential. We had to provide enough room for that on the industry side, to accommodate enough inventory capacity. DELIMA: My comment really is two-fold about that. One, when‒‒growing up here and recalling the Banyan Drive as a major place of activity, parking was always a problem and that golf course parking lot used to be full whenever there was a major event at the Naniloa. And even now, it can be, parking can be very bad if someone is having a wedding or a function because it’s not available for parking right now because of the construction and other reasons‒‒they’re using it for storage. So when Mr. Taniguchi was at the last meeting, he made a remark about the need for parking and I do think though that, and I understand why you’re proposing another hotel, but to be frank, I don’t really see that being something that’s going to happen in the near future, but I can see it being something possible down the road. My reservation is, I thought that one of the visions was that the community convention or conference place could be the possibility of one day perhaps being constructed in a way that it could be served as an amphitheater, conference, where you could actually have the Merrie Monarch rather than at the Tennis Stadium, you could actually have it in an amphitheater kind of something like Tanglewood type of place where you would have under-roof seating as well as open seating in a setting that would look out towards that ocean where that hotel is being proposed. But perhaps there are no view planes, no possibility for that to occur. So that’s how I was envisioning the potential aspect of a community type of center. My other thought was that if it becomes the center for the Merrie Monarch festival where hālau could actually have space to ‒‒ Page 15 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes KANUHA: Practice, perform‒‒ DELIMA: ‒‒practice perform. KANUHA: ‒‒demonstrations. DELIMA: Yeah, and then there could be like a living demonstration, cultural. And I think we had that discussion early on. It would bring vibrancy to the area that in itself would be an attraction. So you would walk the Banyan Drive, you would go and visit the, that cultural community aspect, and then it would have a venue for performing arts whether it would be concerts and other activities, and you would have parking and that type of‒‒ That’s how I viewed, so it would be a place for the Merrie Monarch, but at the same time it would be a center for other events and you would have the natural aspect of having the mixed use where you have restaurants and, you know, bars and other type of amenities that would go along with that type of experience. So, I mean, that’s my‒‒one person’s thought. I like the ideas that let’s make comments, and then other people will have some comments and‒‒ But I really like the way this is being fleshed out. So I appreciate all the hard work and the public comments. Sig, you wanted to‒‒ KANUHA: I don’t think that has really changed a lot, you know, the concept of what that was. I’m looking at the map now and that resort node is primarily symbolic. When I look at it now, I can see that how the cultural center, community center is oriented with view planes. I can see this hotel intersects that. So visually, that’s an easy correction. We can just shrink the node down, but it’s more conceptual that if a new site were to come in or if there was interest for a new site, that’s the vicinity we would like to see it in. DELIMA: You know, I’m not a planner, but what I thought might be a‒‒we had this discussion at the last meeting so it’s not something I just came up with, there was some discussion about it, is that area across Reed’s Bay where they have the‒‒is it the water pumping station or the sewage pumping; there’s a little KANUHA: The park? The park on‒‒ DELIMA: Yeah. KANUHA: On the other side of Reed’s Bay, right? DELIMA: Yeah, the Reed’s Bay Park. So it would be on the Hilo side, Hilo Town side, I thought maybe that could be a potential for a hotel because you would‒‒across would Page 16 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes be across the road and you would still have the view of the, like Mr. Inouye said, you gotta have the ability to see the‒‒ KANUHA: You know that was kind of imbedded in that description that we have for that commercial strip. From the Ken’s intersection; that commercial strip. We kind of left that open based on your discussion the last time that maybe a‒‒ DELIMA: Okay, the Holiday Inn or something. KANUHA: Yeah, something like that could be incorporated and that’s imbedded in that depiction as well. DELIMA: Anybody else have any other comments? Mary? BEGIER: I think the comment that we had in the past that I’m not hearing being introduced here is the concern about erosion, global warming. And that that’s why we were going to get away from expanding the resort node on the makai side of Banyan Drive. Because we were dealing with the reality of‒‒we’re talking about people making substantial investments. When they make those investments they’re going to look at that, the longevity of their structure, and that was why the idea of having the cultural facility have a larger footprint because it wasn’t gonna be just a cultural facility. It would be‒‒so I could see what you currently have, the purple node and the gold node, those should be blended together. That was my memory of where we were heading to address the issue of being able to see the ocean. If you look at other properties that are successful, they often have their first‒‒they’ve got their parking on the ground for one thing, then the other thing to deal with is FEMA. Your Department of Public Works could tell you what’s going on with FEMA and the flood situation. Anything new we build, we’ve gotta build it a standard and so the only way to‒‒you’re gonna be up probably four or five floors just for that purpose, so that makes sense to be parking, and then go from there. I don’t mean to be asking for specifics today, but you have to think about those specifics when you’re dreaming the dream. So, I’m just concerned that we’re losing the idea of planning for the future, even Hilo Hawaiian and Naniloa, even if they were the only hotels left there, they’re gonna still have‒‒they’re gonna be making plans for that issue because it’s already a fact of life for their properties. KANUHA: As you know, one of the studies that was conducted by the State was based on sea level rise, the length of the leases, and things of that. So we’ve continued to go back to that information and this conceptual land use plan is the land use component. The actual master plan that you’ll be adopting will have a little more specificity in terms of location, what the development envelopes could be. One of the concepts that’s commonly used is that if you set back your structure away from the shoreline to accommodate the sea level rise, public access in the front, so on and so forth, then one of the proposals may be, well, we’ll give you a break in terms of your side yard setback or Page 17 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes height, or if you split up the buildings, create view corridors, you get different kind of development alternatives. That’ll come in the more detailed phases that you’ll get next. BEGIER: Okay. Thank you. DELIMA: Anybody else have any other comments? Okay if not the Chair will entertain a motion, well, we’ll just defer this until next meeting? KANUHA: Next meeting. DELIMA: Okay. Okay, very good job. We’ll move on to Administrative Matters. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS 1. Approval of minutes from the July 28, 2016 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency meeting. DELIMA: Chair will entertain a motion to approve. GOROSPE: Move to accept. ZANE: I’ll second that. DELIMA: It’s been moved and second. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor to approve the minutes say aye. ALL: Aye. DELIMA: Motion is done. It’s adopted. Everyone voted ‘aye.’ ANNOUNCEMENTS 1. Next meeting date. DELIMA: Our next meeting is the last Wednesday in October at 2 p.m. It’s going to be here too? Probably? MEAD: No, I think we‒‒that’s going to be a to be determined. We’re still trying to work on a room reservation‒‒ DELIMA: Oh, because the election. MEAD: Yeah. So we’ll make sure that everyone on the distribution list, and you folks as well, are notified where this is‒‒ Page 18 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes DELIMA: Anyone wants to know where the meeting is, you want a copy of the agenda, see the staff so they can make sure that you have notice of the meeting. th BEGIER: Chair Brian DeLima, the last Wednesday is the 26 of October, just for clarity. DELIMA: October 26. Okay, so our next meeting is October 26 at 2 p.m. and we don’t know where we’ll be, but‒‒ BEGIER: But we’d like you all to be there. DELIMA: ‒‒we’d like you all to be there. If there’s no other business, the meeting will be adjourned. Thank you very much for coming. Meeting adjourned at 3:05 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Kim L. Tanaka, Secretary ATTEST: Brian DeLima, Chairperson Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency Page 19 of 19 Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency September 28, 2016, Minutes