The Kaua’i County Council’s Planning Committee Thursday sent a proposal for rezoning Makaweli for the proposed Gay & Robinson resort, Kapalawai, on to the entire council for possible approval. Councilman Ron Kouchi, who is not a committee member, said he
The Kaua’i County Council’s Planning Committee Thursday sent a proposal for rezoning Makaweli for the proposed Gay & Robinson resort, Kapalawai, on to the entire council for possible approval.
Councilman Ron Kouchi, who is not a committee member, said he would support the proposal.
“Gay & Robinson are fully invested here. We’ve never had a developer say they wanted to help the most disadvantaged in the community,” Kouchi said, referring to the developer’s proposal to add 15 units of housing on the resort property for resort employees earning less than median income.
Councilman Randal Valenciano, a committee member, expressed similar sentiments.
“I’m putting a lot of faith in the developers and am hoping the people of the West Side benefit from this project,” Valenciano said.
G&R has stated that one of its primary aims is to hire West Siders to manage and run the proposed 250-guest resort.
Councilman Gary Hooser hailed the approximately 225 service jobs that would be created in the next two years if the resort is approved in the next few weeks and then built on schedule.
“It’s easy to be critical about service jobs. But there are a lot of people who just want a job with benefits. A lot of people appreciate that opportunity. And this is not some giant corporation. It is a local company,” Hooser said.
He also expressed happiness with Dr. Bill Kikuchi’s involvement in the restoration of the historic Hawaiian fishpond on the Kapalawai property.
Kikuchi, a retired anthropology and archaeology professor at Kaua’i Community College, is one of Hawaii’s most well-known experts on Hawaiian fishponds, which were the subject of his university dissertation.
“This is a royal fishpond,” Kikuchi said of the Kapalawai pond.
But he had bad news for some previous speakers at Thursday’s meeting who claimed the proposed resort would be bad for the fishpond. Kikuchi said the pond, if not restored by Gay & Robinson, was less than five years from being “silted over.”
He also had bad news for those citizens who preferred keeping the pond site out of development.
Royals “did not want commoners around. They used to kill poachers at the fishpond, and that’s one law we cannot follow,” Kikuchi said.
The professor also pointed out that in the days when royal Hawaiians owned the fishpond, women were not allowed anywhere near it.
“They were (considered) polluted, except for the very young and the very old. Women were kapu,” Kikuchi said, adding that if women got too close to the fishpond they were killed, just like poachers.
“This is a fantastic fishpond,” said Kikuchi, who has been appointed by Gay & Robinson to oversee the restoration of the pond.
West Side activist Bruce Pleas claimed that the proposed resort was endangering not just the fishpond but almost 30 other sites of historic importance on the property.
But Kikuchi didn’t agree, saying all the other sites “are not very significant at all.”
The committee’s vote to move the project along was unanimous.
Staff writer Dennis Wilken can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) and mailto:dwilken@pulitzer.net
