KAILUA-KONA, HI – The weeklong workshop to apply key components of the award-winning Kona Community Development Plan (CDP) to the Honokohau Village site ended in a Tuesday night presentation at the Sheraton Keauhou Bay Resort. But already the week’s efforts were earning endorsements from many folks, including those with the tasks of taking the plans forward.

Mayor Kenoi met with the PlaceMakers team Tuesday morning.

Members of the PlaceMakers consulting team met on Tuesday morning with Mayor Billy Kenoi, who repeated his support for the project. And earlier, community members were enthusiastic about previews of the final product.

Tuesday night, more than 50 people attended the PlaceMakers presentation. Key elements of the overall plan are explained by PlaceMakers planner Geoff Dyer in the video below. (Note: If you don’t have the capacity to download videos, don’t worry. Details of the week’s proceedings are covered in text and still images augmented by the videos.)

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Immediately below are images taken from the presentation. And below the images are videos of reactions from attendees.

Watch these pages for updates of the Honokohau Village Process over the coming weeks.

ABOVE: This regulating plan serves as the "zoning" for the property, in accordance with the Village Design Guidelines. However, it differs from conventional zoning in that it places a higher focus on form, character and intensity, and then mixes uses accordingly. Click image for larger view.

ABOVE: The illustrative plan demonstrates how, in accordance with the regulating plan, the property might build out. Click image for larger view.

ABOVE: Various architectural techniques can be employed to maintain a coherent streetscape while addressing the site's sloping condition. Click image for larger view.

ABOVE: Honokohau Village's civic building at the heart of the community, which would likely also serve as the primary transit stop. Click image for larger view.

ABOVE: A primarily residential street scene, featuring the integration of multiple product types. Click image for larger view.

ABOVE: Addressing sloping grade through alleyways and tuck-under parking. Click image for larger view.

ABOVE: Addressing the sloping grade through this bungalow court, small homes sharing a central pedestrian greenway and featuring rear-access parking. Click image for larger view.

KAILUA-KONA, HI – Hours before the Monday-night “pin-up” of work-in-progress for the Honokohau Village TOD, PlaceMakers lead designer Geoff Dyer offered a peek at the team’s thinking so far. The idea is to provide a mixed-use neighborhood, closely integrated with the emerging West Hawaii Civic Center, where people can live, work, and play without relying exclusively on automobile travel.

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By Tuesday evening, when the weeklong charrrette concludes, the PlaceMakers’ master plan will be refined for a final time, based on feedback from County officials, developer teams, and community members who’ve visited the studio over the week. To see where the design effort began, check out the introductory narration of PlaceMakers project principal Susan Henderson earlier in the week. And to get an overview of the project, read the Big Picture post to the immediate right.

The fleshed out Honokonau Village master plan that emerges on Tuesday is, of course, a demonstration plan. It’s a way for the three partners in the process – the County, the community, and the PlaceMakers consulting team – to collaborate on the application of key components of the Kona Community Development Plan (CDP) to a real place. The charrette, like the CDP process itself, has been a true community effort, with the work-in-progress design explained by Geoff Dyer above the result of dozens of reviews and revisions.

An eventual, implementable plan must pass muster with the community, the County, and development teams responsible for making the investment to realize the project. For a view of the County’s perspective, listen to the County’s director of planning talk about the project. And for a developer’s outlook, check this video from Bob McClean, whose company owns a substantial section of the Honokohau Village site.

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Don’t forget Tuesday night’s final aloha presentation at 6:30 p.m. Location and directions are on the Location tab in the toolbar above. And if you can’t make the presentation in person, you can catch up on all the essentials here on the website – plus comment on what you see.

KAILUA-KONA, HI – “A road map . . . something we can take from Kona and use in other parts of the Island.”

That, among other things, is how County planning director Bobby Jean Leithead Todd explains her hopes for the Honokohau Village charrette, currently underway at the Sheraton Keauhau Bay Resort, in a video interview Saturday afternoon.

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By the Tuesday-night aloha presentation, the project team will have created a demonstration master plan for a Transportation Oriented Development (TOD) in keeping with the award-winning Kona Community Development Plan (CDP).

Along with the PlaceMakers consulting group and community residents, the County represents one-third of the partnership in the public charrette. The County’s interest is especially understandable given staffers’ responsibilities for understanding new ways of doing business under the Kona CDP, helping developers navigate a revamped entitlement process, and enforce new regulations.

Fortunately, just about everyone approves of the ultimate goals of the new planning approach. That’s because of the success of the three-year public participation process that led to the creation of Kona’s CDP, which became law in the fall of 2008. The Honokohau Village project is the first major project proposed under the new CDP.

For an overview of the goals of the Honokohau Village charrette, see the BIG PICTURE post to the immediate right. Too orient yourself to the project site, see the aerial photographs. And to see PlaceMakers project manager Susan Henderson offering a video introduction to the project site, check out this previous post.

KAILUA-KONA, HI – Even with only a little of the vertical construction for the new West Hawaii Civic Center rising from the site for the proposed Honokohau Village, the appeal of the place is evident. So are the challenges.

“The site goes mauka to makai,” said Susan Henderson, design director for the PlaceMakers consulting team. “And there are going to be significant slope issues. So we have to integrate in a very meaningful way access to the neighborhood amenities and transit . . while being mindful of the topography.”

Henderson and other members of the project team, including County planning manager Bobby Jean Leithead Todd and land owner/developer Bob McClean, visited the Honokohau Village site Saturday morning to get a feel for the design opportunities. You can see Susan Henderson’s introductory video tour below or just continue reading for the broader perspective. (Note: For those without the capacity to view videos from these pages, we’ll always deliver the core information from the video in text; so you won’t be missing out on anything.)

The Village site comprises 80 acres, with sections owned by the County, by McClean Honokohau Properties, and by the Department of Hawaiian Homes Land. With all the land owners invited to participate in this week’s charrette, the weeklong public workshop offers an ideal opportunity for the project team to demonstrate how the Kona Community Development Plan (CDP) can be applied to a real place.

By the charrette’s final presentation on Tuesday night, Oct. 27, the team will have drafted a demonstration master plan that should accomplish the two goals of the week: To create a master plan for a CDP-compliant Transportation Oriented-Develolpment (TOD) and to provide a training opportunity for County planners, development teams, and community residents. For an overview of those goals, see the BIG PICTURE story immediately to the right of this column.

There are plenty of opportunities to participate in the charrette in person between now and Tuesday night. Check out the day-by-day schedule, as well as location and directions information for all events leading into the final presentation. For a guide to when to attend if you have limited time, check out our “Interested But Time Strapped” post.

If you can’t be at the charrette in person, you can follow everything on these web pages, which will be updated daily through Tuesday evening’s closing presentation and then thereafter once the team’s finalized recommendations are delivered. And please send us comments or questions by using the format at the bottom of this – and all other – posts.

Kona’s award-winning Community Development Plan (CDP) paves the way for new approaches to planning. The approach we’ll be talking about during the Honokohau Village charrette is Transit Oriented Development (TOD).

Need a quick briefing on what TOD is all about? Here’s a Q&A to orient you. For more Frequently Asked Questions about the charrette, see our FAQ page.

Question: Honokohau Village will be a Transit Oriented Development. What does that mean?

Answer: A Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is designed to increase choices for getting around – not only by car, but also by walking, bicycling, and transit.

Q: What’s the advantage in that?

A: When you expand transportation alternatives beyond just private automobile travel, you can invest more in providing the kinds of neighborhoods many people want. If people can get where they want to go by walking and riding bikes, for instance, that makes more customers available for shopping, dining, and entertainment and for commercial space in office buildings. If residents can live close to where they work and give up one or more family cars, that makes a community more affordable, as well. All of that boosts return on investment for developers. But it also means more effective use of taxpayers’ money.

Q: How so?

A: Because it creates opportunities for more compact development, that can mean more efficient use of infrastructure funding, fewer highway-scale thoroughfares, and less real estate reserved exclusively for parking.

Q: But Americans – including Hawaiians – love their cars. How are you going to get them to give up the independence of automobiles and suburbs in order to live more densely in these TOD neighborhoods?

A: No one has to give up anything. Let’s make it easy for the market to decide where and how people want to live. Studies show that there’s a much higher demand for housing in walkable, mixed-use communities then there is supply.

Q: How did that happen?

A: Relatively cheap gas and government infrastructure support for suburban development has made the suburban lifestyle the dominant one for decades. Now, there are plenty of alternatives for folks who want to live in the suburbs and commute everywhere by car. In fact, suburban developments were generally the hardest hit by foreclosures in the recent economic downturn; so for the immediate future, there will be even more suburban homes on the market for those who prefer that way of living.

Q: What will change that trend?

A: Consider first the still unmet demand for safe, mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods – especially from two large demographic groups, Boomer empty nesters looking for low-maintenance comfort and young college grads just entering the job market committed to an engaging, vibrant lifestyle. Think about the declining resources of governments, which will force hard choices on where to invest in infrastructure. Then, factor in the likely increase in oil prices as the world economy ramps back up. Being wedded to automobiles as the only viable transportation option and to auto-centric sprawl as the sole model development pattern seems less wise all the time. By enabling TODs, we’re just expanding choices and letting the market decide.