Preferred Development Scenario / Community Development Plan

The Growth Opportunity Areas were a key element in developing the Community Development Plan. They were the focus of incentives to stimulate market driven development, such as expedited permitting, tailored zoning regulations, public transportation, and infrastructure for water supply, wastewater, district wide drainage, and roads. A parallel set of disincentives for land outside the Growth Opportunity Areas, aimed at preserving open spaces and working lands, would make it more difficult to develop “green fields” and gated communities -- where infrastructure would have to be provided by the developer, for example, to meet county standards of concurrency and connectivity. The Growth Opportunity Areas – with higher densities, a mix of uses, density bonuses for affordable housing, and form-based or performance-based zoning – help rationalize Kona’s growth so that development happens in a coherent fashion, through the creation of villages and neighborhoods, rather than individual, disconnected subdivisions and gated communities.

A Working Group process was the final phase of the public process, allowing citizen input in the creation of the Community Development Plan. This phase addressed agriculture, cultural resources, economy, energy, environment, facilities and programs, flooding and natural hazards, government, housing, land use and planning, recreation, and transportation, and resulted in specific objectives and actions to be included in the final product – the Community Development Plan. More detail is available here.

Mandated by the Hawaii County General Plan, the Kona Community Development Plan was initiated by the Planning Department in 2005 to create a regional plan specific to unique natural, agricultural, and built environments of North and South Kona. The Community Development Plan translates the General Plan’s goals, policies, and standards into implementable actions as well as serves as a forum for community input into land-use, delivery of government services. While there has been a long history of planning in Kona -- with many plans sitting on a shelf – the Community Development Plan benefitted from widespread community input, creating a sense of ownership; a change in county ordinance that made plans enforceable rather than mere guidelines; a critical monitoring component that will track progress; and finally, the visualization techniques, which helped the community understand alternative scenarios for the future. The extensive civic engagement process led to the guiding principles of the Kona Community Development Plan:

1. Provide connectivity and transportation choices.
2. Provide housing choices.
3. Provide recreation opportunities.
4. Direct future growth patterns toward compact villages, preserve Konas rural, diverse, and historical character.
5. Provide infrastructure and essential facilities concurrent with growth.
6. Encourage a diverse and vibrant economy emphasizing agriculture and sustainable economies.
7. Promote effective governance.

The Kona Community Development Plan is being implemented by the county through extensive amendments to the County Zoning Ordinance, including “floating zones” for transit-oriented development, traditional neighborhood design, affordable housing, and other designations, and Village Design Guidelines tied to an expedited review process. The county will now require the concurrency of road segments and connectivity both within and between developments, multi-modal street design, neighborhood parks in subdivisions, and the preservation of agricultural lands. The Kona shoreline will be protected with an enhanced shoreline setback of 1,000 ft. through the Transfer-of-Development Rights (TDR) or other means, water quality monitoring and public access.

Since the completion of the Kona Community Development Plan and the amending of the zoning ordinance, two transit villages have been proposed by developers – the Village at Keahoulo, and Honokohau Village – both compact, traditional neighborhood design. The Community Development Plan “is a reflection of the will of the community. It gives us the framework and basis. We have a beginning place for conversations about growth and development,” said Wally Lau, West Hawaii Deputy mayor. “[It] gave us a blueprint of what we needed to do from the start.” In 2009, the Kona Community Development Plan won the Outstanding Planning Award from the Hawaii chapter of the American Planning Association.

As Deputy Planning Director Margaret Masunaga put it, “In the not so distant past 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 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. 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 into the next generation.”