By HARRY EAGAR
Staff Writer
WAILUKU -- The Rainforest Village project in Kihei got a positive vote from the Maui Planning Commission Tuesday, but like Roger Maris' home run record, this one will go into the records with an asterisk.
The application from Kihei Gateway Partners for a zoning change on 29 acres at the apex of Piilani Highway and South Kihei Road was not controversial. The property is now agriculture and interim and is going to urban.
But questions remain about the specifics of the design of Rainforest Village.
Commission members Moana Andersen and Joe Bertram said after the vote that they had thought the two applications -- one for zoning, the other for project district phase one -- would be taken up separately. (Commission practice varies; sometimes it takes two votes, sometimes one.)
However, the rest of the commission thought it was voting on both at once. Bertram actually made the motion, but he merely referred back to a much earlier statement, which he had forgotten was comprehensive rather than separated.
The motion passed 6-0, with two members absent and one seat on the nine-member commission unfilled. It takes five votes to take any action.
So if Andersen and Bertram had voted as they planned, the project district motion would have failed, 4-2.
Andersen said it was her mistake and she at first did not think it would be necessary to ask for reconsideration. All she asked was that the recommendation to the County Council note clearly that the commission was not united on the theme park design application.
However, Deputy Corporation Counsel John Rapacz cautioned her that perhaps, if the council approved the project district application, Andersen would have a harder time making her case for changes when the project comes back to the commission for a special management area permit. (It comes back a third time for project district phase two approval, also.)
That led Andersen to move for reconsideration, but that failed 4-2.
The Planning Department supports the project. The entrance to Kihei could have ended up ``with four Costcos,'' said Planning Director David Blane.
Landowner Harry & Jeannette Weinberg Trust has mulled over several proposals in recent years, including large shopping centers.
Carla Flood, speaking for the Kihei Community Association and Kihei 2000, said she would prefer a public park, but since that isn't going to be, the theme park is a desirable alternative, with lots of open space.
What kind of open space made a long debate between Bertram and project partner John Rowe.
Bertram, calling himself ``Mr. MUT'' (for multi-user trail), is the commission's most vocal advocate for lateral parks along the shoreline, bikeways and other nonvehicular public ways.
He wanted a study of using Waiakoa Gulch, which bisects the property and occupies about one-quarter of the area, as developed open space. Rowe objected that keeping the gulch open would create liability and security problems.
Bertram said he wouldn't support the application without a serious study, citing language in the county's General Plan supporting open space. And he pointed out that if a study showed the idea to be unworkable at this location, that would be the end of it.
With Blane backing Bertram, that condition was added to the department recommendation.
Other issues, such as whether views would be blocked by 50-foot artificial mountains, will be addressed in greater detail at the SMA hearing.
But water remains a key question. Sally Raisbeck of Wailuku queried well tests that showed fairly high chloride levels in an irrigation well drilled on the site.
But the developer gave assurances that the water would be usable.
Looming larger than that specific issue is the overall question of a rain forest in the driest part of the state. That, said Andersen, was why she would not have backed the project district application.
She pointed out that many questions were raised at a public hearing in Kihei in June about water. Yet, she objected, the plan brought back Tuesday showed not a single change in response.
Consultant Mike Munekiyo repeated, as he had said in Kihei, that there is no intention to make an actual rain forest in Kihei, only a park with a rain forest theme. In fact, the name may be changed to remove the word, he said.
(There is also a difference in the way the project is described. The developers make a distinction between a themed park and a theme park. Theirs, they say, lacks the thrill ride aspect of what is commonly thought of as a theme park.)
But Andersen read again comments from the Board of Water Supply that said drinking water may not be available and recommended changes in the theme, perhaps to a ``Hawaiian cloud forest.''
There also are still questions from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about the extensive open, brackish water in the project and its possible effects on water birds.
Psy 412 Miami University. Last revised: . This document has been accessed times since July 15, 1997. Comments & Questions to R. Sherman .