KOLOA — After three years of waiting, historic Old Koloa Town businesses and visitors may finally get their mountain views back next week. “We’re going to take down the dust screens along Koloa Road and later put them back up
KOLOA — After three years of waiting, historic Old Koloa Town businesses and visitors may finally get their mountain views back next week.
“We’re going to take down the dust screens along Koloa Road and later put them back up (for construction); so it will no longer impede the view,” Stacie Wong, attorney for the Knudsen trust, said Friday. “I will be removing it by the end of next week. I’ve already contracted for the work.”
Only the screens along Koloa Road will come down, he said, but not the support posts, because of the high cost for removal and eventual replacement when contruction finally gets underway.
“The total cost when we put up the screens was about $250,000,” Wong said. “The structures are set in deep foundations, because they have to be able to handle a high wind load.”
However, in a letter to Kaua‘i County Engineer Donald Fujimoto in September, Wong said, “…if we are unable to commence construction by Jan. 15, 2011, we will voluntarily remove the dust fences and post supports at the time.”
Wong’s letter was in response to Fujimoto’s August letter stating the department had received numerous complaints, and the public requests removal of the dust screens and post supports “based on the prolonged project inactivity” and “failure to obtain a grading permit.”
Fujimoto wrote: “Your cooperation in the removal of the dust screens and post supports is requested as soon as possible.”
The letters were circulated at a Thursday night Koloa Community Association meeting. KCA members reminisced about how the developer cut down 29 of 41 old-growth monkeypod trees on the property years ago in early preparation for construction that never happened.
When asked his response to community complaints, Wong said, “I seriously thought we would start construction soon.”
By taking down the dust screens, “we’re trying to be a good neighbor,” he said, adding that he knows that they are not asthetically pleasing.
Koloa Marketplace LLC — a joint venture between the Knudsen family trust which owns the land and Michigan developer David Nelson — has experienced and continues to experience construction delays, said Wong, but he intends to go forward with the project sometime in the near future.
The screens, an estimated 20 feet high, were erected around the perimeter of Knudsen’s property in late 2007 in anticipation of the construction of a 76,000-square-foot shopping center at the corner of Koloa Road and Maluhia Road. The black dust fences tower over the historic village that sits directly across a narrow, single-lane stretch of road.
Dan Gensen, assistant manager of Pizzetta Old Town Koloa, said visitors don’t know how nice it was before.
“Our locals accept the fact that gears grind slowly to get anything done,” he said.
When told of Wongs plans to remove the screens, Gensen said, “Awesome!”
“I think that’s a great idea because then your staring at the mountains and stuff behind (the fence),” he said. “It would also be nice if they moved the screens back so people could park in the shoulder.”
