LIHU’E — The walls come tumbling down later this month at the venerable Waiohai hotel. And while Project Manager Greg Kamm knows what a fine spectator sport it would make to implode the existing buildings to make way for Marriott’s
LIHU’E — The walls come tumbling down later this month at the venerable Waiohai hotel.
And while Project Manager Greg Kamm knows what a fine spectator sport it would make to implode the existing buildings to make way for Marriott’s Waiohai Beach Club, he told the Kaua’i Planning Commission Tuesday he knows implosion isn’t the best way to bring those buildings to the ground.
Especially when somewhere between 85 percent and 95 percent of the demolition debris is now expected to be recycled into the new, 230-room timeshare resort.
The landscape salvage work is well underway — the first phase of a $2.5 million demolition contract awarded to Unlimited Construction Services, Inc. Kaua’i Nursery and Landscaping is handling the landscape salvage and greenwaste recycling.
And, while Jim Hill, general manager of the Outrigger Kiahuna Plantation Resort that is the Waiohai’s neighbor, was lobbying for an April 1 start for the main buildings’ exterior demolition work to begin, to get out of the way of the two busiest months of the year in terms of visitor arrivals at his resort (February and March), the best Kamm could do was schedule the exterior demolition for a Tuesday, March 27 start.
Both Kamm and Attorney Max Graham told the commission that county Department of Public Works Building Division approval of the demolition work and waste management plan didn’t come until January 24, giving the Waiohai only a short window of time to inform Kiahuna and other neighbors of the impending work.
Yet everyone understood that the demolition work would begin within one year of Marriott’s gaining of commission permits necessary to tear down the old to make room for the new, Graham said.
The Kaua’i Planning Department permits were approved mid-2000.
Going on now is indoor work, known as “soft-stripping,” where interior walls and everything else in the existing hotel rooms is torn out, with the materials brought to the existing courtyard and pool area in the center of the old Waiohai shielded from Kiahuna view by the existing Waiohai buildings, Kamm explained.
There, it is sorted into various commodities for recycling. Hotel furnishings were donated to local charities wherever possible, he added.
Work currently underway is not silent, but is not very noisy, either, Kamm said. Dust is being controlled with water trucks and hoses. A construction information and complaint hotline has been established for community concerns, he continued.
After getting assurances that weekly formal and informal reports would be issued from Marriott to Kiahuna, Commission Chair Bob Kaden said he thought the applicant had done a good job of communicating its demolition schedule to its Kiahuna neighbors.
But Commissioner Gary Baldwin said a four-week notice to Kiahuna of pending demolition work is insufficient and “inconsiderate,” especially when many winter visitors book their vacations six months or longer in advance of arrival dates.
“There’s no good time to do construction, and Kiahuna will have to live with that,” said Baldwin, adding that he’s looking for Marriott officials to live up to representations they made to the commission during permitting public hearings and deliberations.
Kamm said bids have been solicited for construction of the first two new buildings, with construction tentatively scheduled to start in May of this year and extend through the end of 2002.
The total, staggered construction schedule will see the new resort’s seven other buildings built beginning at various times, from mid-2001 to early 2003, with everything finally completed around mid-2004.
If that schedule changes, which is likely, the commission and Kiahuna will be the first to know, Kamm pledged. During public testimony accepted at the meeting, Cheryl Lovell-Obatake said the unearthing of archaeological finds could delay that construction schedule.
From the beginning of the work at the Waiohai, located along Po’ipu Beach on a site that includes a known heiau, an archaeologist has been on property, Kamm said.
Hill, during commission discussion of a letter he wrote in mid-January bemoaning the “11th-hour crisis generated by Marriott” by not giving Kiahuna fair warning that the demolition work was to begin, added that viewplane issues (where some Kiahuna owners and guests will have ocean views blocked by some of the new, four-story Waiohai buildings) also have not yet been adequately addressed by Marriott.
He has said on other occasions that Kiahuna, if it has to, will file suit to protect those views.
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
