Designer Calthorpe expands concept to create a community

Urban planner Peter Calthorpe presents recommendations to the Maui Tech Ohana meeting held at MEDB. Photo: Peter Liu

With Maui County reassessing its land use strategies through 2030, the owners of the Maui Research & Technology Park are taking the opportunity to assess their plans for the long-term future growth of Maui County’s R&T industry.

The planning project aims to promote growth in the technology park by making it more user friendly, relying on on concepts offered by urban planner and community designer Peter Calthorpe.

Named by Newsweek as one of the country’s “innovators on the cutting edge,” Calthorpe detailed recommendations being made to Maui R&T Partners for developing the R&T Park through 2030 – and beyond – during a session of the Maui Tech Ohana held in Kihei on December 15.

It will mean building on the vision established in 1986 when the Maui Economic Development Board first received Maui County Council approval for a special zoning ordinance, Chapter 19.33, to ease approval of facilities for technology businesses within the Kihei Research & Technology Park District.

The purpose of the Maui Research & Technology Park is to foster business growth in fields involving science and technology, as a third leg of Maui County’s economic stool.

Former Maui County Planning Director Chris Hart recounted the vision of the late Mayor Hannibal Tavares and Maui Land & Pineapple Co. CEO Colin Cameron in setting up the Maui Economic Development Board for the purpose of establishing a research and technology component to match agriculture and tourism as economic mainstays.

But the 20-year-old vision of a stand-alone, one-size-fits-all R&T Park is out of date, Calthorpe said.

In its place, a planning team that includes Chris Hart & Associates as well as Calthorpe is offering concepts of a mixed-use community integrated with the surrounding developments on the slopes of central Kihei and conforming to the topography of the 400 acres of old pasture land.

Calthorpe founded his community and regional planning operation, Calthorpe & Associates in 1983, (www.calthorpe.com) based on his own ideas of the necessity for diversity and “walkability” for communities to thrive economically and socially. The planning group was awarded the JC Nicholas Award for innovation in community design from the Urban Land Institute in 2006.

In discussing the reconceptualization of the Maui R&T Park, Calthorpe said a developing area needs to differentiate itself from others and provide a sense of place – an identity that is an element of the differentiation. Maui has established an identity that helps to differentiate the island even from other islands in Hawaii, but he said the Maui R&T Park has not developed its own identity.

But he cited a third factor that is needed in developing the Maui R&T Park in the 21st Century: “A desire to see the economy grow from the grass roots.”

“The idea that investors from Japan or China are going to come here to develop businesses for you is just not realistic. For Maui, the viable economic plan is to grow your businesses from within with the people who are already here,” he said.

To support that, Calthorpe offered a reconfiguration of the land uses allowed within the R&T Park to include residential projects, school sites, parks and a community commercial center – retail shops, restaurants and services catering to workers and residents – including business structures suited to “live-work” operations, where an entrepreneur can live where the business is conducted.

The design would establish a pedestrian-oriented community around the areas designated for the “knowledge industries” dealing with innovation, science and technology.

The proposals for reconfiguring the R&T Park are in line with the original concept of the park as a place to promote economic development focused on opportunities in science and technology, said Jeanne Unemori Skog, MEDB president.

“It is aimed at creating a sense of community from social, economic and environmental points of view,” she said. “The plans align with what MEDB envisioned for the research and technology park. It makes sense for workers to be close to where they work, and when you look at what the community is proposing in the development of a new General Plan, it’s what the community of Maui wants.

“We are interested in creating a walkable community. We’re interested in creating a workable community. The people who are working at the park now are telling us that’s what they would want, to be part of a community where they live and work.”

Calthorpe said the revisions to the R&T Park master plan encompass key principles to creating healthy urban environments, including having diversity and a balance of options for living and working, integrated with a commercial center that caters to the workers and residents to create “a synergy of parts.”

It is “pedestrian scale,” with homes close to schools, commercial centers and the industrial-sized facilities where jobs are being created. It is focused on individual needs rather than on needs of cars for transportation.

It considers the environment, with lot plans and designs conforming to the land rather than grading and filling the land to force it to conform to the project design.

It is integrated with the surrounding community and recognizes the interdependence of the parts, such as designating a section bordering the Kihei high school site for residential development, convenient for students to walk to school.

It is all in line with the effort to promote the R&T Park as a place for science and technology businesses by creating a more attractive package of lifestyle opportunities for professionals and technicians who will work there, Calthorpe said.

“It is intended to make more of a multiple-option community rather than a single-use product,” he said.

Steve Perkins, project coordinator for Pacific Rim Land, the management arm of Maui R&T Partners, said Calthorpe’s presentation to the Maui Tech Ohana is just an initial public discussion of the R&T Park planning. The planning consultants will be meeting with the Kihei Community Association planning commission in December and with the KCA general membership early in 2010 to discuss the concepts being developed and to consider public comments.

Any reconfiguration of the R&T Park master plan will require a revision of the county zoning ordinance providing specific uses within the R&T Park, and members of the County Council and Planning Department will be apprised of the program as it is developed. Perkins can be reached at www.pacificrimland.com

For more on Maui Tech Ohana, go to www.hightechmaui.com/programs/techohana.cfm.