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Standards Set High for Kona Planning as CDP Attracts Applause from APA

Oct 05, 2009

Barely a year-old as a County of Hawai`i ordinance, the landmark Kona Community Development Plan (CDP), is already winning awards.

On Thursday, September 24, during the 2009 Hawai`i Congress of Planning Officials conference at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel, the state’s chapter of the American Planning Association awarded the CDP its 2009 Outstanding Planning Award.

Photo of Mayor Billy Kenoi, together with Deputy Planning Director Margaret Masunaga (left) and Planning Director Bobby Jean Leithead Todd, displaying the Kona CDP.

Mayor Billy Kenoi, together with Deputy Planning Director Margaret Masunaga (left) and Planning Director Bobby Jean Leithead Todd, display the Kona CDP.

“Receiving this recognition from the state’s professional planners is special to us,” said Mayor Billy Kenoi, “because it affirms the County of Hawai’i’s commitment to planning for the future in collaboration with our communities.

“Special mahalo to the Kona CDP Steering Committee, who reached out to over 800 residents for input on the long range plans of how they wanted 800 miles of land in Kona to look in the future,” said the mayor.

Community Development Plans are relatively new to the County’s regulatory framework for planning. They fit beneath the County’s overall General Plan and reflect District-specific goals. More specific regulatory tools, such as zoning ordinances fit beneath the CDPs.

The involvement of community leaders, residents, business people, and top professionals in Hawai`i and from the mainland was critical to the Kona CDP’s development. The prime private contractor preparing the Kona CDP was Wilson Okamoto Corporation, which provided planning and engineering services.  ACP Planning and Visioning led the community outreach process together with the Environmental Simulation Center supporting the community mapping workshops.  Also contributing: The Conservation Fund on “green infrastructure” and David Paul Rosen & Associates on affordable housing.

In acknowledging the award, Mayor Kenoi pointed to important next steps outlined in the CDP’s Action Plan. Included were: Expansion in the area of North Kona in the area of the West Hawaii Civic Center, construction of the Ane Keohokalole Highway (Mid-Level Road), and Honokohau Village Transit-Oriented Development.

The Honokohau Village project marks the first big step in applying the award-winning Kona CDP to a real place.

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Kona CDP Gets First Big Test: Public “Charrette” Begins Oct. 21 →

  • Big Ideas Become Reality as Kona
    “Charrette” Applies Community Development Goals

    “This is a whole new way of planning,” says Margaret K. Masunaga, deputy director, County of Hawai`i Planning Department. “That’s what makes this so exciting.”

    The immediate focus of this new planning experience in Kona is the Honokohau Village, a 80-acre site that includes the new West Hawai`i Civic Center. But the broader aim is educational.

    As County Planning Director Bobby Jean Leithead Todd explains in this video, this is the first major project to be planned under the award-winning Kona Community Development Plan (CDP), enacted into law in September of 2008. During the multi-day public “charrette," residents and community leaders, developers and builders, and County officials and staff will get to see how new guidelines apply to a real project in a real place.

    “We’ll use this experience to learn from and to teach one another,” says Masunaga, who was hired by Mayor Billy Kenoi and Planning Director Bobby Jean Leithead Todd to oversee Planning Department activities in West Hawai`i. Masunaga is a resident of Captain Cook in South Kona and lives on a Kona coffee farm.

    “By the time we’re finished, we’ll all know exactly what it means when we say ‘TOD’ and what the term implies for development in Kona,” says Masunaga.

    TOD stands for Transit-Oriented Development, a neighborhood development approach encouraged under the new Kona CDP. The transit orientation comes into play when development can be designed to make the most of not only personal automobile travel, but also biking, walking, and transit. A TOD, in fact, maximizes the advantages of mobility choices so that people representing a wide range of ages, abilities, and incomes can share the advantages of living, working, and playing in a compact, walkable community.

    The Kona CDP provides much more than guidance for TODs, of course. It prescribes goals for putting Kona-appropriate development in the right places, in the right scale for those places, and in the right relationships to surroundings. The upcoming Kona charrette will customize Village Design Guidelines described in general in the Kona CDP specifically for the 40-acre, transit-oriented site around the West Hawai`i Civic Center.

    “So we’re not just talking about planning for transit, walking, biking, and cars,” says Masunaga. “We’ll also use the charrette to set standards for Honokohau Village that will include building setbacks and heights, the width of streets and sidewalks, the mix of building types, allowable density ranges, and the placement of public parks and other open space. The result will be a village design that encourages a true neighborhood atmosphere.”

    Conventional planning approaches often complicate community-building goals. “In the not so distant past,” says Masunaga, “we planned subdivisions that were disconnected from one another and where people without access to automobiles were isolated. The disconnections affected all sorts of other things, including infrastructure investment, environmental protection, and public services like police and fire fighting. “

    “One of my dreams,” Masunaga says, “is that my seven-year-old daughter will be able to safely walk just about anywhere she needs to go for her daily needs. That’s not possible in most places in Kona now.

    “Mahalo nui loa to everyone who made the Kona CDP a reality. Now we can implement the policies to guide the Planning Department and the Planning Director on how we want Kona to look like in the next twenty years and into the next generation.”