Struggling Children’s Discovery Center grateful for support

These past years have certainly been a protracted and intense character-building period for us at the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center.

The homeless encampments around the center in Kakaako Makai have proven to be frustrating for everyone, both those living within the camps and those of us leasing land from the state within Kakaako Waterfront Park or nearby. We have all been directly impacted by this situation, with no clear solution in sight.

We have watched the efforts of the city and the state, of outreach groups, and even businesses as they have attempted to tackle this most intractable of community issues.

It is as complex a social issue as any community can encounter and one that our community as a whole is impacted by. We’ve repeatedly shared our concerns about access to the Discovery Center and about the safety of our children as they come for events and programs.

We have appealed to both city and state officials for their help on ways to lessen the impact and inconvenience to the families, especially the children, who love coming to the center.

What our families have had to witness and endure over the past five years has been unacceptable and even, in some cases, traumatic.

I want to express my heartfelt apologies for the many inconveniences they’ve encountered. I also want to express sincerest thanks to those families who have supported us through these troubled times and those who have continued to bring their children to the center in spite of this. Dealing with road closures, lack of parking, tickets issued when unloading children, cars towed, and now with no access to our front entrance, our loyal members have persisted in bringing their children.

As an aside: When the homeless encampments completely surrounded the center, Honolulu police officers then assigned to the area were extremely helpful, especially those in the District 1 Community Policing Team. They showed us how much they cared about the Children’s Discovery Center, even at a time when Kakaako Makai was subject to conflicting jurisdictional oversight between the city and state.

Now that enforcement is strictly the responsibility of the state and the Sheriff’s Office, some HPD officers still come by when off-duty just to say hi and to see how we are doing. While others may see clear jurisdictional lines in Kakaako, these officers see only citizens, and our youngest ones at that, whom they have been sworn to serve and protect.

During the Waihee administration, we were invited to lease land to be the anchor tenant in the park so that families could come to the area to live, work and play. The community supported our capital campaign that enabled moving the children’s museum from Iwilei to Kakaako, and our doors opened here in 1998. We were proud to be a part of the visionary transformation of Kakaako back then.

Today, Kakaako Waterfront Park is closed, as is the main parking lot, for an indefinite period of time. Our guests have had no vehicular access to our front entrance for over a month now, without any sign of that changing. In spite of this, our loyal members and families still manage to bring their children to the center, and those who choose not to come anymore promise to return.

This December we celebrate our 19th birthday since moving to Kakaako Waterfront Park. Little did we know all that this move would bring — and, simply put, things are really bad for us now. The center’s future grows more uncertain with each passing week. Even so, there remains belief that the difficulties have made us stronger in our resolve to continue serving our keiki and our community.

Loretta Yajima is president and board chairwoman of the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center.