I just wanted to flag a few items of interest.

Larry Geller (disappearednews.com) had an insightful take on Kakaako development yesterday (“There goes the neighborhood“).

Geller flagged a timely NY Times story about luxury hotel developments, and paired it with a description of the penthouse unit in one of the upcoming Kakaako condos featuring 21,182 square feet of living space (that’s a home of roughly half an acre) and an estimated monthly maintenance fee of $19,521.

From the NY Times, as flagged by Geller:

“The income stratification is more dramatic and that brings this [luxury hotel development] on,” he said. “That’s what we’re really talking about, highly conspicuous consumption as wealth flows from the broader population to a very small subset.” –David Loeb, a senior hotel analyst at Robert W. Baird & Company in a New York Times article on luxury hotels.”

Geller comments:

Once again, we learn of another towering condo going up in the Kakaako area through a front-page lead story in the Star-Advertiser. Isn’t there any more important news in the world today that should go on the front page? On the other hand, maybe the editors are doing us a service—chronicling the destruction of Honolulu as we know it.

Oh, Honolulu will continue to exist, but will we be here? The median cost of housing continues to rise into the stratosphere. We, the citizens and voters, do not benefit from the kind of luxury housing that profits these developers. The routine approvals for the exemptions that make their high-rise-high-cost units possible are anti-democratic. Unless we regain control of the urban planning process, we will continue to be planned out of our own city.

And he makes another excellent point: “Development that depends on exemptions does not create an environment where people want to live, work, play, and shop.”

Hmmmm. How many of the current crop of planned or proposed high rise projects could go forward without seeking exemptions? Maybe Larry can answer that one.

Add to that a shout-out to Henry Curtis, who has been doing excellent reporting on energy issues at his Ililani Media site.

This week he reported on the Public Utilities Commission’s public hearing on a proposed undersea cable to move energy between Maui and Oahu.

He reports:

The hearing lasted 53 minutes. The first half hour consisted of presentations by the PUC, DBEDT and the Consumer Advocate.

Then six members of the public spoke. These speakers were limited to three minutes each.

That’s it in a nutshell, I suppose. Although there was no need for a time limit, with only a few people seeking to speak, the PUC stuck with the arbitrary 3-minute limit. Why? I guess, like many agencies, they just ask, “Why not?” It’s certainly easier if you only let the public have a few sentences. It at least keeps up the facade.

And in a great post last week, Curtis profiled the PUC commissioners, including their official travels. Good work, Henry!