Public Park for Aala Triangle Approved By City Council

Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.

Honolulu moved a step closer yesterday to planting trees where a rotting wooden slum stands when the City Council approved a recommendation to turn the 4.1 acre Aala Triangle into a public park.

Two councilmen, Ernest N. Heen and Richard M. Kageyama, voted against the park recommendation of the City Planning Commission.

As proposed by the Planning Commission and the Honolulu Redevelopment Agency, the triangle bounded by King and Beretania Streets and the present Aala Park will become a more than $2 million urban renewal project in the downtown section.

Of the total cost, the Federal Government will pay $1.5 million and cost to the H.R.A. will amount to $739,000.

H.R.A. Director Lee Maice told the Council yesterday that residents and business establishments in the area will have a minimum of about two years for moving out of the condemned area.

Tentative schedules call for demolition of the dilapidated buildings in the triangle in late 1963. Land acquisition will start late this year.

The City Parks Department, according to Maice, could probably take over the area sometime in 1964.

D.A. Seeley, of the Parks Department, told the Council last week the department is ready to accept the offer. He said the new park would not be a playground but a Thomas Square of the Fifth District.

Maice assured the Council last week that commercial establishments would not be forced to move from the Aala Triangle until a shopping center at the corner of Liliha Street and Vineyard Thoroughfare is ready for rental occupancy.

It is also understood that relocating families from Aala will also share housing priority in the adjacent Kukui Redevelopment Project with present Kukui residents.

In consideration of an established Aala tenant, the Nippon Theatre, City councilmen were petitioned to allow the theatre to remain in the Aala area, even if relocated.

Maice told the Council that if the theatre were forced to relocate, he estimated a $6-7 a square foot purchase, plus improvements, as the bill the City would pay.