Veterans of World War II are dying at a rate of 1,900 a day across the nation, said Gene Castagnetti, director of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.

To accommodate more cremation urn space at the cemetery — which is at capacity for in-ground burials — the Department of Veterans Affairs is planning a $24 million project to move its administrative offices out of Punchbowl to help create space for 9,000 more columbarium niches.

Castagnetti said the goal is to provide urn space for veterans for the next 20 years.

The conceptual plan calls for turning a residential portion of Puowaina Drive, the current access road, into a dead-end street, constructing a new Punchbowl access just mauka of Puowaina on 5 acres of U.S. government property, and building a new two-story hillside administrative offices and visitors center on the site.

Plans for an American Battle Monuments Commission visitors center on the 5-acre plot have been temporarily shelved, but a separate project over and above the $24 million effort that will be pursued involves expanding the battlefield mosaic maps on each side of the site’s Honolulu Memorial to include the Vietnam War, Castagnetti said.

Castagnetti, a retired Marine Corps colonel, said there are more than 10,000 columbarium urn spaces at Punchbowl now, of which 2,552 spaces are open.

Based on a utilization of 50 columbarium niches a month — the rate for the past three years — those remaining open spaces would be filled in 412 years, he said.

At the same time, the cemetery will be seeing exponentially higher numbers of burials from World War II and Korean War veterans.

"We are the cemetery of choice, because it’s recognized as an international symbol of selfless sacrifice," Castagnetti said, "and our veterans who served nationally, or under our nation’s fabric, like the idea of being buried, or interred as cremated remains, in a national shrine."

There are 131 national cemeteries within the VA system, Castagnetti said. Arlington National Cemetery is separate and is run by the Department of the Army, he said.

A public informational meeting to discuss the Punchbowl proposal will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. Nov. 3 at Stevenson Middle School, 1202 Prospect St.

"It’s essential that we include the community, of course, and get their input. We’ll be basically in their neighborhood," Castagnetti said of the proposed new administrative space and visitors center.

He said an environmental impact statement likely would be required. There is no set time line for construction, only the knowledge that the cemetery likely would run out of columbarium space within about five years, he said.

There are about 33,500 in-ground burial plots at the cemetery, and no more room for new casketed graves. In February 1948, Congress approved funding, and construction began to turn Punchbowl into a cemetery. The first interment was made on Jan. 4, 1949. Thirty-one Medal of Honor recipients are buried or interred at Punchbowl.

Two buildings built in about 1948 near the entrance to Punchbowl that house administrative offices would be razed to make way for additional urn spaces on an approximately 1-acre plot, Castagnetti said. Each urn niche is 10 inches high, 14 inches wide and 20 inches deep.

Castagnetti said a columbarium expansion completed a little more than a year and a half ago added about 3,800 niches, and of those, there are 2,552 open spaces left.

The American Battle Monuments Commission erected the Honolulu Memorial at Punchbowl in 1964 with a sculpture of Lady Columbia overlooking the graves to honor the sacrifices and achievements of American service members in the Pacific during World War II and in the Korean War.

Castagnetti said a plan is being pursued to expand the World War II Pacific and Korean War battle mosaics to include a Vietnam War map pavilion of similar mosaic design.

A memorandum of agreement is being worked out between the American Battle Monuments Commission, the owner of the Honolulu Memorial, and the VA. Castagnetti said he expects the project to be completed by Veterans Day 2012.

A new visitors center is planned for the 5-acre plot, now a grassy and wooded piece of land, but plans are being shelved, at least for now, for what would have been a larger interpretive center by the monuments commission describing different facets of the war in the Pacific, Castagnetti said.

A sidewalk improvement in Punchbowl also is part of the $24 million effort.

"This was all built in 1948, ’49," Castagnetti said. "We really need to upgrade it, as we have been doing right now with our Millenium project cleaning and repairing markers and upgrading the grass."

About 30 percent of the sod has been replaced so far as part of the $4.5 million grounds project, Castagnetti said.