• Grove Farm’s green smoke • Gavel-to-gavel televised broadcast of budget • Button it up Grove Farm’s green smoke We now know the style of post-crash real estate speculation. It’s green! It’s sustainable! Just as natural as a chartreuse lycra
• Grove Farm’s green smoke • Gavel-to-gavel televised broadcast of budget • Button it up
Grove Farm’s green smoke
We now know the style of post-crash real estate speculation. It’s green! It’s sustainable! Just as natural as a chartreuse lycra outfit on a putting green! Grove Farm is touting a new kind of community to be built along the highway near the entrance to Lihu’e Airport — a new mall on 130 acres of what was agricultural land to be called Wailani.
The story published Sunday about Grove Farm’s Wailani project near the airport raises questions.
The Wailani project will put office with retail space into the mix of tenants. This is nothing new in the evolution of sprawl development. In addition, the plan purports to be a walking community — that is, once you park your car and get out to do some retail shopping or visit the office of your auto insurer. Yes, it will have residential units built into it that will qualify it as the “first walkable ‘smart growth community’ on island.” But by “affordable” I doubt if any of the baristas at the Wailani Starbucks will be able to afford to live there.
And lastly (here comes the green part) this developer says it “will likely” get a LEED certification (if that does not get in the way of making money on the deal). Who do they think they are kidding?
The only new component of this project is that it is labeled “green,” “sustainable,” “smart growth” and “a walkable community.” Even if it were to sport photovoltaic rooftops and natural ventilation it is none of these. At this point on our journey to sustainability of Kaua‘i, the only smart growth is no growth. We need to be powering down and gardening up for a future with less tourism and more independence. The state is broke and even our county is looking at furloughs in anticipation of harder times. What does Grove Farms see in the future? It seems it is more of the same with a new label — “Sustainable Living.”
The rendering above should tell you what you need to know. A huge parking lot with retail structures indistinguishable from nearby Kukui Grove Center is what you’ll get.
The real planning here put this project at the center of the new four-lane highway access that is under construction between Kapa‘a and the airport. A convenient place to buy wine and cheese on the way from the car rental to your transient vacation rental on the North Shore.
If this proposal was not located at the intersection of two highways for drawing traffic from all over the island and instead was part of an urban renewal scheme for Lihu’e or Kapa’a it might make sense.
If this plan was to create a new community of resident farmers on ag land with a place to sell their products it might fit into our real future.
If Grove Farm had asked for a parking variance to limit the parking area to just that needed for a self sustaining community it might make sense.
Grove Farm would be living up to its name if were providing land for growing food on Kauai within our communities. As it is, this is just another mall in a new style. It is a scheme for Grove Farm to sell off land that we’ll need soon for growing food and real sustainable living. Do they really believe painting something with green makes it more wholesome?
Using Grove Farm’s stated goals to solve real problems on this island might lead us to apply them to the Coconut Marketplace. It was Kaua‘i’s first mall and is now a ghost town along the highway on the way to Kapa‘a. Why couldn’t that be a vital walkable community? If we cannot support the Coconut Marketplace, why should the Wailani site work?
Juan Wilson, Hanapepe Valley
Gavel-to-gavel televised broadcast of budget
First time in history, nine-day gavel-to-gavel coverage of the mayor’s budget will finally broadcast to show how your county tax dollars are spent department by department. But perhaps not the way you think.
This important achievement in government transparency depends much less on a roughly $18,000 Hoike price tag, but instead political will and an unprecedented offer by The Garden Island to post video to its news Web site (see “Shot in the dark,” In Our Opinion, March 13).
A generous offer by our newspaper particularly poignant in the face of a likely failure by Council, Mayor Carvalho and Hoike to perform in the light of extraordinary resources (see “Paying for it twice,” Forum, March 15).
Money is not the matter regardless excuses given by both administrators and council members alike. Councilman Tim Bynum tells us that for three years he pushed unsuccessfully for budgets on TV to find this year he is supported only by colleague Lani Kawahara.
But why?
My witness to budget hearings last year was one of high quality work by both council members and department heads. It confounds me to intentionally deny a television viewing audience.
However, instead of allocating this year’s broadcast line item budget in Boards and Commissions toward this year’s budget hearings (the $18,000), Mayor Carvalho spent the entire balance of $130,000 to secure an Internet streaming contract beginning this May. Never before has this kind of cash been spent this fiscal year for a bulk of services rendered in the following fiscal year. Why was the significantly less expensive budget broadcast left out?
Mayor Carvalho, which is it: Together: can or can’t?
Chairman Asing, which is it: Leadership or gamesmanship?
Hoike, which is it: P.E.G. monies for public access or not?
Rolf Bieber, Kapa‘a
Button it up
This is in regards to the article in the March 12 edition of The Garden Island (“Motorist cries foul over speeding ticket), and to Michael Miller, the Kapa‘a resident who got ticketed for speeding:
Whine, whine, whine! You broke the law and got caught and I’m glad you paid the ticket. Now button your lip and deal with it and leave our men and women in blue alone; they’re doing a great job!
Kilinoe Okami, Anahola
