Proceed with Haleiwa hotel and park

Nearly 2 million visitors come to historic Haleiwa each year.

Oahu’s original resort, Haleiwa had four hotels: the 1898 Seaside Inn, the 1899 Haleiwa Hotel, the Fujita and the Doi, the first two before Waikiki’s Moana Hotel of 1901.

Today these small country inns are no more. Twenty years of Haleiwa Town and city sustainable community planning include a "country inn," but the daunting process of hearings, permits and historic-design rules discourage investment. Nothing has been built for more than 10 years in Haleiwa’s commercial district.

Haleiwa Beach Park is a sadly neglected historic 1930s jewel. Its crumbled sea wall, a dangerous eyesore, remains unrepaired. Restrooms are so bad that residents use Jameson’s By the Sea restaurant across the street. This once-magnificent park, on the state Register of Historic Places, deteriorates while the haole koa bushes across Kamehameha Highway suddenly became the focus of a "Save Haleiwa Beach Park" group. Everyone drove past these bushes for decades.

What happened? Clearly, a proposed replica Haleiwa Hotel is the issue, yet it would be limited to two stories by the Historic Design District rules. Some 120 jobs that wouldn’t require a long commute, and additional tax revenues for the city and state, are ignored.

This vacant land, recently cleared of a homeless encampment, was for decades a site of local family homes and businesses. Na kamaaina remember Jerry’s Sweet Shop, the original Sea View Inn and Marian’s. A small fraction, less than an acre, belonged to Bishop Estate. Taken by eminent domain more than 42 years ago, the city-planned "regional park" with golf course, cabin camping and amenities was dropped for lack of funding.

There are 21 North Shore parks owned or partly purchased by the city: 18 city beach parks, 3,004 acres at Pupukea Paumalu and Waimea Valley, for a total of 3,276 acres. The vacant parcels at issue are in the city’s inventory, but are NOT on the list of city parks. The future need identified in the city’s community plan is for a "community park" of 10 acres, with play courts and sports fields, too large for this spot, but not for the existing, underutilized, 52-acre Kaiaka Bay Beach Park or 25-acre lower Pupukea Paumalu. Sadly, the city cannot keep up with its current "to do" list.

For example, within the existing Haleiwa Beach Park, toward Puaena Point, there are still three acres of unimproved beautiful beachfront land. Proceeds of a sale could be used here.

The landowners abutting the parcels, with the legal right to bid, must develop a park as a condition of the sale. The vacant land is not a park now. It is unsafe and posted as "No Trespassing," with stumps, rocks, holes and uneven ground. The area adjacent to Jameson’s is overflow parking for the restaurant and trailer parking for North Shore Canoe Club. With the sale, the community gains an actual, developed park, managed for community use, like Kapiolani Park or Moanalua Gardens.

A former state senator commissioned a 2010 survey by reputable pollster Ward Research that showed a majority in favor of a country inn at the site. We support Resolution 12-143 authorizing sale of the vacant parcels to an abutting landowner.

Either bidder, Kamehameha Schools or developer D.G. "Andy" Anderson, must develop a park where there is none now. The North Shore needs parks and appropriate economic development in the commercial district.

We prefer both a park and the restored beauty of the Haleiwa Hotel, a legal overnight accommodation of Victorian magnificence near the mouth of the Anahulu River on Waialua Bay.