By Hugh Clark
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawai‘i — Puna’s Gateway shopping complex proposed near Kea‘au won a 6-3 vote of approval yesterday from the Hawai‘i County Council, moving the project by W.H. Shipman Ltd. to a final vote next month.
The council approved the fourth draft of the rezoning bill after hearing nearly three hours of testimony, much of it opposition, from Puna residents who called the development urban sprawl and a potential traffic hazard for a new bypass highway opened last year.
The issue, which has been awaiting action for 18 months, previously won Planning Commission and council Planning Committee approval, but opposition has been growing with the formation of a new organization that gathered 1,700 signatures against the 32-acre site near Shipman Business Park.
The two council members representing Puna split. Green Party member Julie Jacobson of mauka Puna and Ka‘u joined Kona members Nancy Pisicchio and Curtis Tyler III in opposing the rezoning.
Freshman Councilman Gary Safarik of lower Puna joined the four other Democrats and Republican Leningrad Elarionoff of Waimea in approving a change to mixed-use zoning for the $32 million project on 20 acres of agricultural land.
Stewart Hussey, a Volcano resident who led the petition drive for signatures, and others said they want more shopping opportunities in the island’s fastest-growing district. But they want shopping in Kea‘au Village, most of which also is owned by Shipman, which controls 17,000 acres in Puna.
Speakers, many of them former Mainlanders who said they came to live in a rural environment, said Puna does not need a large-scale shopping complex that will compete with businesses five miles away in Hilo.
Claims by the developer that the Gateway center will create 470 jobs were dismissed by many speakers, who said the jobs gained by the new center will be lost elsewhere.
But a large number of boosters said they look forward to retail employment. They included two men who said they are currently unemployed. Some advocates said they can save time and gasoline by shopping at the new complex.
Also among the opponents was Carl Okuyama of Sure Save Super Markets who has a grocery store in the Kea‘au Town Center about a mile from the proposed center that is due to include a yet unnamed supermarket.
Nancy Cabral, a real estate manager who said she controls several hundred Puna rentals, told the council "there is an absolute need for more services. This (the proposal) is an excellent idea.
However, Debra Ward, a state employee who said she has lived in Kurtistown for 20 years, joined commuters in opposing the center, saying it would snarl traffic because of additional signal lights that would be required.
Puna, a district nearly as big as O‘ahu, has no large-scale retail centers, and Shipman president Robert Saunders said his firm is filling a need.
Some testifying against the proposal, such as Russell Kemp who drives daily from mauka Puna to Hilo, said they were worried about congestion. Kemp, president of the Puna Traffic Safety Council, said the need for more stores is obvious to him but the location is wrong.
Phil Barnes of the Sierra Club complained that the center is being misrepresented as a Puna enterprise when it is "an extension of the Hilo corridor. This is another Hilo thing."
The proposed site is about a mile south of the Hilo-Puna boundary.
The Shipmans are a fifth-generation kama‘aina family who acquired the Puna holdings from the estate of King Lunalilo under a Hawai‘i Supreme Court-ordered sale during the 1870s.
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