I've always loved going to Poipu / Koloa on Kauai. There are a lot of condos and a smattering of big hotels and it felt a bit crowded but the place managed to retain its small town charm. The mainstreet of Koloa still had plenty of space to walk. You could get a seat in the restaurants. Most importantly, you could find parking on the beaches. I knew there were big plans afoot for more development in Koloa but I had no idea that 4,500 units were in the planning or construction stages (a nice round up by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin). Simply put, this will turn Koloa and the entire South Shore into a total zoo.

The whole population of Kauai is only 50,000, give or take. Even doubling that for tourists (a very high estimate) means roughly 100,000 people on island. These new developments will add at a minimum an extra 10,000 people to the daily mix on Kauai and probably more (2 bodies per unit per day, particularly with most of the units condos, is a very lowball estimate). So imagine if you effectively increased the population of a small town by 50% in a decade without matching infrastructure improvements? Bottom line, it would be a total mess. Am not sure how this is going to turn out but I hope better than it seems.

—Alex, 05/31/07