The Hawaii Community Development Authority was created to develop Kakaako three decades ago. Until now things haven’t changed much.
But now a land rush of towers is going up while you watch. Recently the Howard Hughes Corp. broke ground for its Waiea project. Soon many more will rise, and buyers will buy. Kakaako captures the imagination because it fills a hole in the center of our city, making old into new, making nothing into something and redefining our capital city for centuries.
Sure, it’s bristling with problems, like congestion, infrastructure, homelessness and sea level rise. Sure, we’ll have to pay for it and live with it. So it certainly behooves us to be part of the process. Actually, cities are being redesigned all over the world. Architects and planners everywhere are studying how cities connect their inhabitants. We do need a better-planned city, and we should learn and adopt this new way of thinking. Ideally, we’d blend the private spaces with the public ones. But these towers will contain some of the most expensive gated communities in the world, unattainable and inaccessible for most of us. For Hawaii we need to make them coexist.
With billions at stake, there is little that can stop the towers. We need housing and the economy needs construction. But it’s troubling that so few can call so many of the shots. The price of good community design is eternal vigilance.
For its part, Kamehameha Schools has actively prepared Kakaako for redevelopment. It has renovated buildings into rental apartments and shops; it has allowed artists to paint buildings; it has supported popular events in the street.
In so doing, KS has inspired a remarkable new vitality. But can that vitality survive the rent increases that come with gentrification? Will the neighborhood’s success then also be its demise?
Kakaako has become art. So it’s perfect that Artspace, a nonprofit that has built condos for artists on the mainland, is building low-priced condo, rental and retail spaces for artists here. Kakaako is also innovation. Co-working is alive at The Box Jelly and soon the Impact Hub, and at the "maker" spaces, shops and food trucks. This is all a magnet for the Kakaako Generation.
Ten years ago medical school Dean Ed Cadman wanted a campus of big pharma. The Cancer Research Center was going to be huge. KS was going to build an Asia Pacific Innovation Center. It didn’t work. Aside from a scaled-down version of the Cancer Center, tech went dormant. Now HCDA wants to provide space to the High Technology Development Corp. in a new building in Kakaako makai, but the Legislature has failed to fund it. Tech waits, hoping.
In 2006, under Calvin Say, the Legislature outlawed residential towers in Kakaako makai. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs now wants to do just that. Does OHA have to be a high-rise developer? Why doesn’t it build low-rise retail and open things up to the people?
Permitting towers is not the only issue; the public spaces are still in play and must be designed with the people in mind, especially those who can’t afford to live in the towers. The public must take ownership of those spaces. The Kakaako Generation must find its voice.
This requires a public conversation. That was evident at the Downtown Forum on May 21, just as it was the next day in the AIA (American Institute of Architects) Kakaako vision meeting. We must all learn to participate.
What should the conversation cover? Cultural contention is interesting, but the real question is what kind of neighborhood we want to have. We need to focus on building the public spaces for everyone so they will bring our city together.
The public should be able to come, park, walk, shop and eat in Kakaako, even as visitors to a place they can never afford. For them we must protect the tree-lined promenades and bikeways.
If you want to know more about the politics of public spaces, find Michael Kimmelman on YouTube; download "Happy City" from Amazon; see "Catching Up With Kakaako" on ThinkTech. How about making a local version of spur.org?
All in all, this is the most important project the state has ever seen, larger than the convention center, the ferry or rail. We can’t afford to foul our nest with profiteering and polarization. We need to work together to foster pubic confidence. Kakaako is our greatest challenge and could be our finest hour. Risks will be taken; fortunes and reputations will be made or lost. Our city is being reinvented and the changes will affect everyone. What we do there will reveal who we really are and exactly how vigilant we’ve been.
Jay Fidell, a longtime business lawyer, founded ThinkTech Hawaii, a digital media company that reports on Hawaii’s tech and energy sectors of the economy. Reach him at fidell@lava.net.
