Members of Get Fit Kauai, a group that promotes good health, are asking government officials to require preservation of public access within a 327.3-acre resort planned for development on land by the Kaua‘i Marriott Resort & Beach Club. Get Fit
Members of Get Fit Kauai, a group that promotes good health, are asking government officials to require preservation of public access within a 327.3-acre resort planned for development on land by the Kaua‘i Marriott Resort & Beach Club.
Get Fit leaders said they are gathering signatures from people who want to protect existing walkways through the planned resort by “Running Waters,” a beach area located west of the Whaler’s Brewpub restaurant.
The Get Fit folks want to ensure the public access is protected in any resort-development plan approved by members of the Kaua‘i Planning Commission.
More residents have come out to demand public access be preserved in general, as more new property owners close off their properties, citing liability and trespassing concerns.
But Kauai Development LLC and KD Golf Ownership LLC leaders assert numerous public accesses already exist on their property through county zoning requirements, and that there are plans to improve public access.
“We have public-access plans, both vehicular and pedestrian,” said Kevin Showe, a principal with the Kauai Development LLC. “It is all defined,” he told The Garden Island.
He also said, “Many of these easements have been provided. We are going to work with a county shoreline committee to talk about other, additional, lateral access at the Inn on the Cliffs and the Whalers trail above the Running Waters Beach.”
Members of the Planning Commission are considering requests from the developers to build 723 resort and residential units, including 12 hotel units, timeshare units, condominiums and multifamily units.
The developers are seeking a Special Management Area Use permit, a use permit, a project development use permit, a variance permit, and a Class IV zoning permit, in order to allow the planned development to proceed.
In an e-mail sent to The Garden Island, Get Fit Kauai head Bev Brody said group member Jo Manea wrote in an e-mail that she and others are “very concerned about losing one of the safest and beautiful walk paths on the island.”
Get Fit members noted:
- They want county leaders to protect a walking and jogging pathway that starts from the parking lot at Kauai Lagoons, just above the porte cochere of the Kaua‘i Marriott Resort & Beach Club, goes over two arched bridges, goes past the former Fashion Landing site, a one-time mall for retail stores, loops around to an area where a wedding gazebo is located, and runs into a parking lot mauka of the E Pali Kai Cottages, runs past tennis courts, and ends back at the parking lot.
Showe said people will still be able to walk, jog and ride their bicycles to the Fashion Landing site and the adjacent Whalers Brewpub. The only difference is that they will have to take a different route, he said.
The road that runs from the second arched bridge to the restaurant will be eliminated and relocated elsewhere for use by vehicles and the walking public, Showe said, in order to facilitate redesign of a few of the Kauai Lagoons Mokihana and Kiele golf course holes.
The parking lot that is located next to the road that is to be relocated also will be removed.
The developers don’t need a large parking lot anymore for the Fashion Landing mall, because there will be fewer tenants, he explained.
A spa, a restaurant, and real-estate offices will be the new occupants of the renovated building, Showe said.
In the future, additional parking will be built behind the Fashion Landing site to accommodate public members who patronize the mall and the restaurant.
The removal of the old parking lot will give away to the building of a new golf-course hole. That hole will be built next to condominium buildings that are to be built above the Running Waters Beach.
Showe said the developers, in their new plans for the resort, will increase access to that area.
“We are going to make infrastructural improvements, as we are required to make under the 2002 ordinance (zoning) recruitment,” Showe said. “There are picnic areas, comfort stations and shower facilities.
The Get Fit folks also are asking that a lateral right-of-way be established between Kukii Point and the Fashion Landing site.
Ron Kouchi, a former, longtime chairman of the Kaua‘i County Council and now a key representative for the developers, told The Garden Island that, “if Kukii Point is where the Inn on the Cliffs and Fashion Landing site is located, then that is the lateral access that we are trying to work on with (the county Department of) Public Works.”
Kouchi said Kukii Point is the place on the shoreline where no pedestrian access exists, and “that was what we were discussing at the Planning Commission meeting Tuesday (the public hearing on the proposed resort project on July 12).”
The Get Fit Kauai folks also would like all roads within the project to be have “complete, accessible pedestrian sidewalks which provide safe and attractive direct routes for non-motorized uses.”
Showe said the property has about five miles of roadway, and that it would be “cost-prohibitive” to put sidewalks on all those roads, including service roads.
As far as public access goes, Kouchi said the developer should pay his fair share for improvements benefiting the public.
“There should be so much that should be a fair responsibility of a developer to bear by way of cost, because of public impacts your property will cause,” Kouchi said. “But the county has two stated adopted policies. First, access to the shoreline, and they are exacting us to ensure that we put in the cost to the greatest extent possible, extend the pedestrian access all the way along the length of the boundary of our property.”
The other “stated goal” of Mayor Bryan J. Baptiste and members of the County Council as it relates to the developers “has been the bicycle path,” Kouchi said.
County leaders are proposing a 16-mile bicycle, pedestrian, multi-purpose pathway that would run along the coastline from Nawiliwili to Anahola.
One leg at Lydgate Park has been completed, and another leg from Lihi Park to Ahihi Point in East Kaua‘i is planned for construction this fall. Four other segments are pending.
The developers of the Kauai Lagoons project own property being eyed for the coastal path, as do leaders of state government, those being state-owned lands makai of the Lihu‘e Airport runways. A public-access easement exists on the parcels owned by the developers.
- Lester Chang, staff writer, may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 225) or lchang@pulitzer.net.
