Please stop new development
Please stop new development
It is proverbial that to understand someone’s point of view one should walk a mile in her/his shoes. How about requiring anyone who supports the Hokua Place development to drive a mile along our already congested East Kauai thouroughfares? I have lived in the area for over 35 years, and have seen the local traffic situation steadily deteriorate. Back in the early 1980s, for example, I could drive from my home in Anahola to Lihue Airport in 30 minutes at most. Nowadays it can take an hour or more. How can this be called progress?
How will the building of 769 new houses at Hokua Place improve this state of affairs? The proposed development will only add to traffic congestion in the area. This is more than a problem of simple inconvenience. The already overburdened roads are the very ones that are designated tsunami evacuation routes. How many people could die if a tsunami or flash flood should catch them during the increasingly many hours each day when Kuhio Highway and the Kapaa bypass are gridlocked?
The highway problem is a symptom of other East Kauai ills. The local wastewater treatment facility is old and prone to malfunction. The addition of several thousand more residents doing laundry and flushing toilets will stress it even more.
Certainly, our community needs more housing that local working people can afford. According to statistics published in our local newspaper, however, the suggested starting price for Hokua Place units will be $650,000. How many working people will be able to afford this? Please do not allow this proposed development to proceed. Our community does not need it.
Let us fix the infrastructure problems we already have instead of increasing them. Smart growth is certainly desirable for our island. Hokua Place is not smart.
Heu‘ionalani Wyeth, Anahola
Yes Heu‘ionalani, we all know……..you yearn for your youth, you remember when things were better in your opinion, you wish you could go back to 1970 on Kauai when the only stoplight on Kauai was in Lihue, and there were less people and cars on the island. Got it.
This is why we need to stop electing people in their 50s and 60s on this island. They live in the past and want to make their past our future.
Change and progress are not the devil. Your elected government officials that can’t come up with any outside-the-box ideas to mitigate the island’s issues, and instead believe that higher taxes is always the solution, are the real………one more time…………………real problems. Stop the madness!
Aloha Kakou,
769 houses starting at $650,000.00 on average would be over 2,000 more people and over 1500 cars added to Kapa’a traffic.
Since few Kauai people can afford those costs, $650 to $800 thousand, that’s new on island transplant people and cars.
Not even these mainland developers will want to live here.
I heard a developer on his cell phone say that making housing developments on Kauai was like “TAKING CANDY FROM A BABY”.
Charles
Hey Heu‘ionalani Wyeth, you need to appeal to Duane Kamai. Hoo dat? Read his guest commentary in today’s Garden Island newspaper. He (or is it Hinano Kaleleiki) has “dominion rights, powers, and vested interests through unbroken lineal descendants and genealogical history … with governing and prosecuting powers through our constitution of 1843 [he got the date wrong] along with international and maritime laws, which the kingdom of Hawaii shall enforce to the fullest extent of the law.” Just get him to fix it for you.
Echoing myself and many others, “open some old haul cane roads and stop expansive developments.” $650.000 homes/ apartments/condominiums is not affordable here!
Totally agree with you!
We do NOT need more development. We need infrastructure first!!! Fix the problems, then build. We have it backwards here!
When will the council listen? Stop already!!!!!!!!!
Here, here. No more development till our traffic issues are fixed. Not just talked about, planned or “studied”. It’s not like this is an overnight event.
Here’s a sobering look at why the congestion is so darned horrible. This website shows the visual flights throughout the world, including here on Kauai. You will be shocked at the amounts of flights coming & going at any given hour of the day.
https://www.flightradar24.com/24.06,-142/4
Yes, there are 70,000 residents now but the problem is not coming from us as much as it is coming from the airliners. There needs to be a complete shift in discussions by our new elected leaders to figure out how to address this issue, as it negatively impacts those of us who are lucky enough to live here.