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Monday “Pin-Up” Reactions a Preview of Tuesday Night Closing

Oct 27, 2009

KAILUA-KONA, HI – A solid core of Kona charrette participants have watched plans evolve over the last week. On Monday night, they got a quick preview of key components of the plan that will be presented at the Tuesday-night, 6:30pm, final.

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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← The Village Plan Takes Shape: Planner Previews Monday’s “Pin-Up”
Capturing the Wind: A Kona-Appropriate Architectural Solution →

  • 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.”