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Creating a Model for Future Growth: Chief Planner Explains Strategy

Oct 26, 2009

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.

[Story continues below video]

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.

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  • 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.”