By ERIN MILLER
By ERIN MILLER
Stephens Media Hawaii
An expanding swap meet is a growing source of contention in Ocean View.
Ocean View Partners LLC filed in March for a new special permit for their farmers market, referred to more often as a swap meet. Once held in the parking lot adjacent to Malama Market, the meet exceeded the lot’s capacity a few years ago, representative Bradley Westervelt wrote in his special permit application to the Planning Department.
The application was to change the location and increase the extent of the weekly event.
Former Planning Director Bobby Jean Leithead Todd failed to act on the application within 30 days. County rules allow the application to be automatically approved at that point.
Hawaiian Ranchos resident Galen Lutz said that’s one of the concerns he has about the swap meet. The more pressing concern, though, is the impact the event is having on his subdivision’s private road, Prince Kuhio Boulevard. Lutz said when the swap meet moved to an open lot alongside Prince Kuhio, attendees began parking on the road’s wide, paved shoulders. That’s tearing up the shoulders and creating a safety hazard, he said.
“Since they park all along the roadway, you can hardly see to get through there,” Lutz said. “There are children darting out between the cars. We’re concerned it’s not if (someone will get hurt), it’s when.”
Hawaiian Ranchos Road Maintenance Corp. is appealing the decision to grant the permit.
The county’s Board of Appeals is scheduled to hear the appeal at 10 a.m. Friday at the West Hawaii Civic Center.
Westervelt, in his application, said attendees could park at its former location, then walk to the swap meet. The meet averages 40 vendors a week, with spaces for up to 52, he said.
Ranchos residents pointed out this is a several-hundred-foot walk and people are not parking in the lot. Instead, they park on the Ranchos’ street.
In the appeal, Ranchos residents said they do not have a problem with the swap meet itself, but rather the “chaotic parking problems created by the event.”
Lutz said the Hawaiian Ranchos Road Maintenance Corp. hired someone to keep traffic off the road two Saturdays in a row.
That was successful and only cost about $50 a day, but it’s not something the road maintenance corporation wanted to pay for permanently.
Lutz said he asked Ocean View Partners to foot the bill for security, but they refused.
“They owe us money,” Lutz said. “Either they’re going to pay for some kind of parking security or they owe us money.”
A message left with Westervelt Friday was not immediately returned.
The application also says the swap meet happens only from 6 a.m. to noon Saturdays.
Lutz said he has seen vendors set up several hours later in the afternoon and has noticed the swap meet is now starting up on Tuesdays as well.
Lutz said a deputy corporation counsel tried to talk him and fellow road corporation members out of pursuing the appeal in front of the board, offering instead to set up a meeting with Ocean View Partners.
Lutz found out Thursday that meeting wasn’t going to happen.
“We feel like the county has encumbered us with a dangerous burden that could have been avoided if they met their own deadlines,” he said.
Email Erin Miller at emiller@westhawaiitoday.com.