• Keep the monkeypods • Trees could benefit Shops at Koloa developer(br) • Include monkeypods • Help save trees, mayor Keep the monkeypods Echoing everyone: “Save the monkeypod trees in Koloa.” They help the ecology and help produce fresh air.
• Keep the monkeypods
• Trees could benefit Shops at Koloa developer(br) • Include monkeypods
• Help save trees, mayor
Keep the monkeypods
Echoing everyone: “Save the monkeypod trees in Koloa.” They help the ecology and help produce fresh air.
Back in the ’70s I lived in Koloa on the main road that leads to Po‘ipu in a little studio with a kitchenette and an outside shower shed. There were monkeypod trees on both sides of the studio with branches stretched above the roof top. On a windy and stormy day or night I used to stand by the picture window and worry that a branch would come crashing down onto the little studio. Nonetheless, only little twigs fell to the ground. The large branches would only sway in the wind.
On O‘ahu the International Market Place has trees in the middle of it and it looks very beautiful there. The new owners of the planned Koloa shopping complex should leave the trees that have been there for a long, long time and build some benches around it. The trees will help shade the area and the shops. There will be no need for air conditioning. Overhead fans will be enough to keep the shops comfortable for shopping. (It will save our ozone layer with less air conditioning used.)
Save Koloa town by leaving the monkeypod trees alone and build around them.
To the new owners, in your rental agreement include a fee to help keep the trees well groomed.
Howard Tolbe
Trees could benefit Shops at Koloa developer
Anyone who has driven in Po‘ipu/Koloa can see the huge expansion in residences and visitor-oriented accommodations now under way. This expansion obviously creates the need for more places to park and shop locally. Having more shops in the Po‘ipu/Koloa region is essential to prevent more traffic being forced onto Kaua‘i’s already overburdened highways.
Despite the unhelpful “greedy developer” comments from some, I suspect the developer of the proposed Shops at Koloa Town merely wants to build it efficiently and have it succeed as a profitable rental space.
Many islanders want to avoid a future of hectic crowded shopping and impossible parking but strongly desire shopping projects to preserve Koloa’s historic look and feel.
Where the developer and islanders seem to differ is in their experience of what makes Koloa special and the role the monkeypod trees play in this equation.
Koloa is often quite warm about half of the year. Unless one is in the shade, the sun can be brutal much of the day. Koloa residents and visitors avoid browsing shops during the hottest parts of the day unless they are shielded from the burning sun and hopefully can park in the shade.
Since the Shops at Koloa Town will likely have percentage leases based upon shop sales, the more attractive the shopping experience, the greater rent revenue the landlord will receive. Consequently, the developer may want to reevaluate the benefits the monkeypod trees afford and find a way to keep them in place, not only for shopper comfort but to attract shoppers to the unique opportunity of browsing in a historic tree-lined plantation town, an experience quite different from the usual tree-bare look of most retail developments elsewhere.
Long after the Shops at Koloa Town are completed, the developer and our island will either benefit or suffer by the way they perform. The look and feel to shoppers, and how they fit into our special place will play a significant role in the outcome. To succeed the Shops at Koloa Town must be attractive to shoppers, provide a comfortable experience and preserve the feeling of Koloa as a special place. Retaining the monkeypod trees could play a key role in engendering that success.
Donald Bodine
Anahola
Include monkeypods
Please don’t remove the most beautiful historic things we have left in Koloa. I can see it now, an ABC Store in place of a monkeypod tree. If we must have another shopping center, do something unique. Build it around the monkeypods. Build it “green.” Make a positive impact, something the community can be proud of.
Valerie Ventura
Koloa
Help save trees, mayor
An open letter to Mayor Bryan Baptiste:
As you know, the county agreed to let the developers of the Knudsen Trust Land in old Koloa town do whatever they like with that land, with no control by the county and no input from the residents regarding the wonderful old monkeypod trees.
Surely those people can earn enough millions in their large commercial center without destroying the trees.
Surely a nicer shopping center could be built around and behind the trees.
Why won’t they do it? Why are they going to remove the trees?
Will it cost them more money than they want to spend to work around the trees?
If this is the problem, then I urge you to make up for the county’s original error of failing to respond in time to the permitting request. When this happened, our Kaua‘i government failed its people and gave the developer carte blanche. You can, however, make up for this error if you act quickly by paying the developer to agree to work around those trees.
The developers and the Knudsen Trust will still make their millions.
But the people of this region will not be deprived of the beautiful, shade-bearing, landmark trees.
Please, Mr. Mayor, talk to those people for us. We cannot do it. We have no access. You are our possible mouthpiece.
I hope you, yourself, care about those trees, but at least do it for us, the people. We are sick at the thought of Koloa being denuded of those wonderful old trees which are irreplaceable.
Do not compound the original error by not acting now while there is still time. The trees are to be removed within days.
Mr. Mayor, speak to the developer, and work out an agreement with them to build around the trees. The trees are on the periphery of their land, and will provide the commercial center with a beautiful edging
Phyllis Albert
Koloa
