LIHUE — For some residents who have lived on the North Shore for decades, a plan to develop an affordable housing project near the Princeville Center is a step forward in the right direction, albeit at least 40 years overdue.
LIHUE — For some residents who have lived on the North Shore for decades, a plan to develop an affordable housing project near the Princeville Center is a step forward in the right direction, albeit at least 40 years overdue.
“I have no doubt the Kolopua at Princeville affordable rental project is going to fill a long mandated, promised, awaited, needed and appreciated available housing gap,” Hanalei resident Susan Wilson wrote in a Jan. 10 letter to Planning Commissioners. “The project’s units, in general, look like they will have large windows and the extensive use of solar energy and proposed landscape designs incorporate admirable, forward-thinking concepts.”
Plans call for the development of 44 one-, two- and three-bedroom rental apartments, ranging in size from 745 to 1,128 square feet, on about 3.5 acres of vacant land on the makai side of Kuhio Highway just north of the Princeville Center. When the project could get off the ground is still up in the air.
But what has Wilson and a few residents concerned are details that, in some cases, date back several decades, when the need for affordable housing on the North Shore arose.
In written testimony submitted to the county’s Planning Commission, Wilson and fellow Hanalei resident Barbara Robeson questioned whether the housing project would fulfill mandatory housing requirements imposed on Princeville developers.
Those requirements, they said, were passed onto the developers of Princeville Phase I, and later, the Princeville Center by the state Land Use Commission and county as projects to be funded by the developer.
“Is it the Planning Department’s understanding that taxpayers (public grants, county housing funds, etc.) were to pay for Princeville developers’ affordable housing obligations when various zoning changes were approved,” Wilson wrote. “Could it be these 44 rental units will now eliminate all affordable housing requirements within the 1200 area Princeville Phase I development …”
It is a concern, said Planning Commissioner Hartwell Blake. The commission will take up those issues during its February meeting.
“It’s kind of disturbing, because who is responsible for putting this housing in,” Blake said during the Planning Commission’s Jan. 14 public meeting in reference to the letters from Robeson and Wilson. “From what it seems, and what this says, every developer and their successors promised to put in housing and now we’re paying for it? The county?”
Hanalei resident Greg Goodwin, who lives near the Hanalei police station, said he supports the housing proposal but would like to see a 60-foot right of way on the west side of the property to improve connectivity to Kuhio Highway and ease traffic congestion.
• Darin Moriki, county government reporter, can be reached at 245-0428 or dmoriki@thegardenisland.com. Follow him on Twitter at @darinmoriki.
