04-23-2011, 02:40 AM
One of the major themes of the old Managing Growth working group was maintaining the rural quality of Puna. The Village Center concept seemed to dovetail into that neatly. The sense of it was that distributed, non-centralized Village Centers fit the fact that the subdivisions themselves are distributed and not centralized. By not having highly centralized megamalls, retail needs can be met as well as maintaining the local ambience. Finally, as I believe Rob has mentioned, big development along 130 will certainly begin the shriveling of Pahoa and Kea'au town centers. So the most difficult item to fit into the Village Center idea is locating an anchor-sized store. That's why the outcome of this application for Auli'i is so important.