CALL TO ACTION: developers holding community meeting

We have just learned that hotel developers, who are moving forward with their attempt to build a hotel on the former Coco Palms site, are holding a community meeting in 48 hours!

The meeting will be held at the Wailua Houselots Park Pavilion on Wednesday, October 18 from 6-7:30 PM (address 200-298 Lanakila Rd, Kapaʻa).

Please attend and state your position on another hotel on this property! This is an opportunity for the community to ask questions, voice concerns, and state their views directly to the developers.

As always, please remember to be respectful and practice kapu aloha.

There are many important reasons we have been working to protect this important landmark in perpetuity as a culturally restored and preserved site.

The property is a wetland, spring fed ancient fishpond system, and important sensitive environment and cultural space for which a hotel development is simply unacceptable. Despite this, the developers are pushing through with a larger hotel with a bigger footprint on outdated and inadequate environmental, cultural, traffic and other assessments.

The developers do not even hold permits for some of the State land they intend to build on, those permits having been revoked by the Board of Land and Natural Resources.

Infrastructure, water, wastewater, road and other infrastructure services do not have the capacity to cope with another hotel of this magnitude in this location.

No EA or EIS has been done, despite multiple triggers. The presence of endangered native birds on the property didn’t stop the developer from completely clearing habitat without any known ecological survey. Historically listed trees were already cleared without approvals and dumped in adjacent conservation zoned land, within the wetland. These practices and others have shown a complete disregard for proper land process, cultural sensitivities and environmental awareness.

We are aware that they have attempted to adopt the conversation about incorporating a “cultural center” into their hotel plans by including one out the back, as part of their hotel features. This is NOT what we are asking for, or accepting. They do not get to build a hotel on the cultural site and throw a “cultural center” out the back, and market off the Hawaiian culture. In our opinion the co-opting of “cultural center” by the hotel to sell a vision of working with the Hawaiian community to showcase the culture is a twisted attempt to justify this unwanted and inappropriate hotel.