Last Tuesday night, Council member Brenda Ford held a public meeting about the plan for the 696 acres known currently as Palamanui. A big mahalo to Ford for educating the public and taking the lead on this development agreement!  

I came away with so many more questions. This property is located north of the airport and extends from the Queen Kaahumanu Highway mauka to Makalei Estates makai boundary.  

Palamanui expects to build a commercial area and 1,116 new homes, (according to traffic engineers each home adds 10 car trips per day to our roads) which equals 11,000+ more car trips per day to our roads. 

Ford explained that there is a 20-acre site for professional baseball fields that will be used for practice for Korean teams when it is winter in their country. This is supposed to create jobs. 

Does County Parks and Recreation have an agreement with these Korean teams? Can the community use these fields the rest of the year? 

At the Old Airport Park planning charette, there were groups asking for more soccer fields, play areas for keiki and a 12-court tennis center. Would these 20 acres be better used to serve long-time residents and the new residents of this subdivision in other sports uses than professional baseball fields?

Roger Harris attended the meeting to represent the Palamanui developers.   I asked Harris how many classrooms they would build at the proposed 20,000 square foot building and he said eight classrooms would be built. 

The cost for this building is capped at $5 million. University of Hawaii is supposed to pay for any expenses over $5 million. 

Is there an agreement with the university and the developer? These classrooms are primarily for culinary and nursing classes.  Are the new classrooms supposed to replace the eight classrooms at Kealakekua that are filled to capacity, or are they in addition to these classrooms?   

For the huge impact that another 1,116 housing units add to our roads, schools and water systems, we get eight classrooms and no parks for the community to use? Could we ask for another eight classrooms after each 200 homes are sold? Could we ask for a few dollars each time a house is sold to set aside to build a park and help construct more classrooms?  

Then we might have a university all at one location to serve West Hawaii. 

Can we ask for a neighborhood park with fields and keiki play area? 

Can we record these development agreements to run with the land and to apply to all subsequent developers? Will we end up negotiating new agreements with the next landowner?  

Is this development agreement acceptable to the community?   

Debbie Hecht

Kailua-Kona