Honokohau Village, A Vision for Transit Oriented Development site masthead and project logo

Landmark “Charrette” Launches Wednesday: Everyone’s Invited

Oct 21, 2009

KAILUA-KONA, HI – County officials and staff and Kona community members, with help from an expert consulting team, begin a weeklong public workshop today to plan the first major project under the award-winning Kona Community Development Plan (CDP).

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.

FILED UNDER:   Charrette InformationTAGS: , , ,

SHARE:
| More

Share Your Own Thoughts and Ideas

This online forum is an extension of the public process with the same expectations for civility. Comments may be moderated for relevance and decorum -- but will not be edited for idea content.

← Design Studio Open House Hours
“Charrette” Kick-Off Connects Old and New – Tradition Shows the Way →

  • 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.”