What to do about parking when it comes to new development projects on Oahu? That’s revving up to be a highly contentious issue,
as Bill 2 before the City Council is revealing.
As conceived and initially backed by the city administration, Bill 2 seeks to revamp Oahu’s parking requirements — land-use laws on off-street parking and loading requirements that have not changed in 30-plus years. That’s a long time for no updates amid changing urban needs, especially given mounting data about the imperative to mitigate greenhouse gases and other climate-
change problems. And that’s pitting environmental interests against builder-developer ones.
Among other things, the original Bill 2 proposed to require new projects to have fewer parking stalls and be less vehicle-friendly — specifically, via a mandatory “unbundling” of future parking spaces from residential units. The bill aimed to prohibit the sale of residential parking stalls to be “bundled” in a package for condo buyers, and instead, have condo buyers rent or lease stalls separately via a management firm or homeowners association. The idea was to give buyers more flexibility on whether to purchase unneeded parking, which factors into affordability as well as public policy to lessen gas emissions.
But developers’ lobbying has weakened Bill 2’s intent to dissuade car culture in favor of more multimodal transit, such as walking, cycling, bus and future rail. The amended Bill 2 approved Tuesday allows for parking to be unbundled and offers incentives for doing so, but does not require it. This looser bill advances for further public debate, and more input is needed.
Asked about the bill on Tuesday, Mayor Kirk Caldwell played both sides, saying he supports alternate transportation modes “so we become a more livable city, a 21st-century resilient place. … For me, less parking means less cars.”
Yet he rationalized the revised bill as giving “flexibility to developers to let the market determine how many stalls they’re going to build. … They can build more stalls than necessary, they can build no stalls. We want to leave it up to the developer.”
To the contrary: It’s time to advance policies that face, not blithely avoid, environmental and affordability realities. An amended bill that basically leaves it wholly to developers’ discretion on the amount of costly parking stalls does little to move the needle on better policy.
In a related aspect on this issue, the clout and coziness of development interests are concerning. A city ethics complaint was filed earlier this month against
David Arakawa, head of the Land Use Research Foundation, who acknowledged meeting frequently with city Department of Planning and Permitting (DPP) staffers about Bill 2 on behalf of developers and landowners, even though he hadn’t registered as a city lobbyist, as required.
Arakawa claims that his omissions for this year and 2019 were inadvertent, and said he submitted his registration paperwork last Monday after learning of the omission. Arakawa, once the city’s top lawyer as corporation counsel for eight years, is either disingenuous or a slow learner, since he encountered a similar situation in 2015, when he paid a $2,000 negotiated fine to the state Ethics Commission for failing to file as a state lobbyist; LURF paid $2,000 under the settlement. That’s pocket change in the multimillion-dollar development world; still, the public record is invaluable.
DPP has more than its share of dysfunction, as outlined in a January 2020 city audit. Mayor-elect Rick Blangiardi, even as he campaigned to generally support developers to make headway against Oahu’s housing crisis, called out DPP’s deficiencies, saying his administration would work to streamline processes and make necessary organizational changes.
That’s a tall order. But if this city hopes to position itself well for the rest of the 21st century, it will need to straighten up and make strong policies today to reap the visionary benefits of tomorrow.
