BY ERIN MILLER | WEST HAWAII TODAY Palamanui is mostly paid up for its community college campus obligations. ADVERTISING The developer paid the University of Hawaii $5.2 million this week and put another $4.4 million in escrow, to be released
BY ERIN MILLER | WEST HAWAII TODAY
Palamanui is mostly paid up for its community college campus obligations.
The developer paid the University of Hawaii $5.2 million this week and put another $4.4 million in escrow, to be released when the university completes the access road from Kaiminani Drive to the long-planned community college center.
That $9.68 million is enough to build the road and the first phase, a 25,000-square-foot building, Hawaii Community College Chancellor Noreen Yamane said. Add in costs to outfit the classrooms, office space and culinary teaching area, and the full price for the first phase is closer to $13 million.
The goal, Yamane said after a ceremonial check presentation at the West Hawaii Civic Center, is “a full-blown community college, possibly the eighth one in the system. Start small as a center, probably grow into a two-year comprehensive community college.”
Opening of the campus, Hawaii Community College at Palamanui, was pushed back to the fall semester 2014. The access road is now expected to be done in April, with a groundbreaking on campus construction expected this summer, officials said.
UH President M.R.C. Greenwood said the long planning process for a new college campus is typical, even in the mainland university systems where she previously worked.
“People shouldn’t get discouraged or feel there’s something terribly wrong … when it takes a decade to get from concept to concrete,” Greenwood said.
Private money will combine with tax dollars to grow the campus, she added.
Palamanui agreed to build a West Hawaii campus during its land use reclassification process in front of the state Land Use Commission in 2005. Financier Charles Schwab is a key principal in the development.
Greenwood and UH Board of Regents Vice Chairman James H.Q. Lee thanked a long list of county and development officials, including Council Chairman Dominic Yagong and Hilo councilmen Donald Ikeda, who skipped Tuesday afternoon County Council committee hearings to attend the check presentation; Dennis Onishi; and J Yoshimoto. Former council members Stacy Higa, from Hilo, and Virginia Isbell, of Kona, were also named.
Absent from the list were current Kona council members Angel Pilago and Brenda Ford, as well as former North Kona Councilman Kelly Greenwell. At least one ceremony attendee noted the omission.
Greenwood said it wasn’t intentional.
“These are the folks that helped us with the permitting,” she said. “These are just the individuals involved in the process.”
Ford and Kohala Councilman Pete Hoffmann initially voted against a 2009 request to weaken rezoning requirements, including allowing retail stores to be located closer to Queen Kaahumanu Highway and delaying a mauka-makai road and a park. Greenwell, Yagong, Ikeda, Onishi and Yoshimoto, along with two other former council members, supported the rezoning request.
About 450 students attend the school at the current Kealakekua campus, which has 12,500 square feet of classroom and office space. The first phase of the new campus should be able to accommodate about 700 students, school officials said, with a goal of eventually being able to accept up to 1,400 students.
In 2010, the estimated cost for the project’s first two of four phases was $14 million. There is currently no time frame to complete all four phases.
emiller@westhawaiitoday.com
