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.

Architect and project team member Steve Mouzon thinks he’s found at least a partial solution. In the days before air conditioning, Kona vernacular architecture evolved tried-and-true methods of shading family gathering areas and of making the most of prevailing breezes. Mouzon, long a student of traditional architectural solutions, sketched some of his ideas for the Tuesday-night final presentation.

Questions are coming from two directions. First, those who’ve been associated with the Kona Community Development Plan (CDP) are understandably protective of community goals imbedded in the CDP. For them, enabling a walkable, sustainable, mixed-use model worthy of replication throughout Kona is priority No. 1. To get a sense of the overall goals of the project, see the BIG PICTURE story immediately to the right.

Coming from another angle are developers who have to be convinced of two things – that this new way of developing will serve their business plans and that the County is serious about creating this opportunity and enforcing the regulations that will make it work. See Honokohau Village property owner and developer Bob McClean discuss his perspective at the tail end of our “Village Plan Takes Shape” post.

Those who attend the final presentation on Tuesday night will get the full perspective on how these goals might be achieved. The presentation begins at 6:30 p.m. in the Keauhou I Room at the Sheraton Keauhou Bay Resort. For directions, go to the location tab in the toolbar above.

If you can’t be there in person, watch these web page for a complete report on Wednesday.

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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.

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.

The contributions of Kona’s natural setting are obvious. They’ve been pulling people to the Big Island for thousands of years. Human contributions to the look and feel of Kona have acquired their appeal over a much shorter time by mixing the influences of many traditions, from native Hawaiians who themselves migrated to the Islands centuries ago to more recent immigrants from Asia and Europe. These architectural traditions, refined by climate and craft, are implicit in Kona’s character.

On Sunday, Miami-based architect Steve Mouzon, founder of the New Urban Guild and a member of the PlaceMakers consulting team for the Honokohau Village project took a tour of Kona’s traditional architecture – the residential and commercial forms of the era before the big resort hotels and the second-home explosion. Below are his first impressions via video. Then, below that, click one of the thumbnail photos from his quick tour to view a complete slideshow.

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“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.

Susan Henderson, director of design for the PlaceMakers consulting team, said the opening discussions constitute “a baby step” towards customizing the CDP-enabled Village Design Guidelines. “We welcome your continued input over the next five days.”

Residents viewed examples of Kona character, from the simple to the more ornate.

To demonstrate how Kona-appropriate guidelines might be “calibrated” to produce development consistent with local character and the wishes of residents, the PlaceMakers consultants displayed a draft summary table that lists particular rules for setbacks, building frontages, and other characteristics that determine the look and feel of a place. By the charrette’s concluding presentation next Tuesday evening, the table will reflect all the input and idea-testing during the week. It will be part of the first rough draft of the Village Design Guidelines.

There are still multiple opportunities for participation in the remaining days of the charrette schedule. If you need a general overview of the project’s goals, read our BIG PICTURE summary in the column immediately to the right.

The talk story sessions on Thursday focused on goals the community team wants to keep in mind as the guidelines customization continues. Conserving and enhancing the natural resources of the Island and of Kona in particular were key topics in one session, where participants talked about ways general lessons of sustainability might be applied to this project and ways in which unique aspects of Hawai`i and the study area (the soil characteristics of lava, for instance) demand special attention.

Fortunately, sustainability goals are automatically enhanced by transit oriented design. Compact development that offers multiple choices for getting around means fewer Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) by private automobile and less green house gases in the atmosphere.

Lowering VMT and expanding transportation alternatives, especially the human-powered alternatives of bicycling and walking, supports a second goal under discussion in the Thursday talk story sessions: community affordability. Buying, insuring, and maintaining an automobile adds $8,000-9,000 to family budgets, according to AAA estimates. If families are able to get by with even one less car, the savings free up cash for other needs. And if communities are allowed to reserve less real estate for parking and for highway-scale thoroughfares, taxpayer money can be invested in ways that offer more direct benefits for everyone.

CEOs for Cities, a non-profit advocacy group for leaders in metro planning, estimate that reducing VMT per person by one mile per day in each of the 51 largest metro areas would produce annual household savings approaching $30 billion.

Respect for the land and what it demands of those who are its stewards, for the wisdom of those who’ve come before, and for one another.

Mahealani Pai delivered the noontime blessing, reminding those in attendance of the traditions that can help guide participants in the week’s “charrette”. Aunty Elizabeth echoed those sentiments later. “To share with love from your heart brings truth,” she said. And Wally Lau underlined the lessons learned from thousands of years:

When people recognize all the ways in which we are connected with one another and with all of nature, there can be harmony and balance in human affairs. When there are disconnects, issues arise, obscuring the way forward.

We are all on this journey (wa’a) together, Lau told the opening day group. If we keep our vision and hold steady, we’ll arrive at our intended destination. Working together (laulima) is essential to this journey.

Click one of the following photos to initiate a slideshow from the day, or continue reading below.

The appeal to the wisdom of the past was a perfect way to begin a workshop designed to be an intense collaboration between the community, the County, and the PlaceMakers consultants hired to help apply community goals reflected in the Kona Community Development Plan (CDP). For an overview of project objectives, check out the BIG PICTURE post directly to the right of this column. And to drill down more deeply into the ideas behind the weeklong progress, go to the FAQ section.

The working sessions of the opening day featured discussions on what are considered signature components of Kona’s character and how those much-admired elements can be reflected in Village Design Guidelines for Honokohau Village. Everyone is invited to weigh in on the discussion, from residents and local business people to the real estate development professionals who’ll have to develop strategies for delivering what the community wants while minding their own bottom lines. You’ll hear more about those challenges as the week goes on.

The final event of the evening, a Visual Preference Survey exercise in which people discussed design and construction approaches they preferred for Kona, was so enthusiastically received the session lasted an hour longer than scheduled. It’s a healthy indication of the collaborative spirit invoked by the kupuna earlier in the day. And it’s a good omen for days to come.

Check out the day-by-day charrette schedule for opportunities to participate. And if you’re trying to figure out how to best use limited free time to get involved, check out our advice in “Interested but Time-Strapped?”.

Don’t forget you can also follow each day’s events on these website pages. You’re invited to comment in the section below each post. So you can participate in the charrette even when you can’t be on-site.

The project is called Honokonau Village. It will be a Transportation-Oriented Development (TOD) that will include the new West Hawai’i Civic Center. Here is an aerial view of the project area.

This particular workshop process is called a “charrette” and it thrives on participation. Here’s how you can be involved as much as you like:

All sessions are free, of course. And all will take place at the Sheraton Keauhou Bay Resort, where there will be free parking throughout the week. Explore the day-by-day schedule on our Schedule page. And you can get tips on how to select the sessions you want to attend by going to our post below entitled “Interested but time-strapped? Here’s a guide to charrette sessions.”

To get a general overview of the project, read the BIG PICTURE story immediately to the right of this column. And to understand more about the hows and whys of charrettes, check out our FAQ section.

You don’t have to be present at every stage during the week to keep track of what’s going on or to comment on the process. This website will post updates, interviews, and images regularly during the week so you don’t have to miss anything no matter where you are and no matter when you want to check in. So turn to these web pages regularly.