Piilani Promenade and Maui Outlets are not a done deal as most County Council members and our mayor have concluded. They haven't been built. There are no buildings and no parking lots, the gulches are still there.
The nightmarish traffic scenario for both the highway and the lower road has not yet occurred. (Eclipse Development Group brags on its website of doubling the traffic.) Businesses are not yet laying off people and closing doors at an extraordinarily accelerated rate, but they will if this is allowed. If stopped, perhaps some of the countless shopping areas with depressingly empty retail shops will thrive again.
My emails to our mayor, the developer and several council members went unanswered, save one. Council Member Don Couch responded promptly and agreed with my comments. He said it was approved 14 years ago and "there is no more opportunity for public input." There was no big box/outlet/biggest-mall-in-Hawaii proposal then. This project was approved as a light industrial park.
At the June 19 Kihei Community Association meeting, the people passionately exhibited that they do care. If only the powers that be would be brave and use their hearts and their conscience to halt this project. If they fail to do so, vote them out of office and find representatives that care about the aina and its people. Visitors will certainly avoid the island with the biggest mall, and I imagine the ancestors of Hawaii will look upon it with tears.
Patricia Nuckolls
Kihei
