Liz Tom, an Aiea resident, moved away from Liliha in the 1960s, but its old-time charm keeps bringing her back.
"We come to Liliha as often as we can," Tom said as she savored a steaming bowl of won ton min at Jane’s Fountain, which began serving diners around 1948, about a decade before Hawaii became a state.
"We like this place. We come here, we feel happy. When we go on, we feel good. It makes a difference," she said. "Hawaii no have these kine places anymore."
Tom’s visceral reaction to Liliha is part of the reason that a hui of Liliha citizens has stepped up efforts to preserve the neighborhood by transforming it into a more appealing residential community and Oahu’s newest visitor destination.
It’s hard for some locals to envision Liliha as a tourist destination. It lacks the shine of Waikiki or the green of Oahu’s North Shore. However, forward thinkers say the neighborhood’s quaint pre-statehood architecture and eclectic community offer their own charm — and could go a long way toward attracting travelers looking for an authentic small-town atmosphere.
A group of graduate-level architecture students from the University of Hawaii recently connected with these visionaries to create three master plans that could revitalize the community. The pro bono project, which was facilitated by the local U.S. Housing and Urban Development office and is worth well more than $100,000, will be presented to the public in May along with funding opportunities from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
"The purpose for this was to give local stakeholders an idea of what could be," said Homer Williams, an associate professor at the University of Hawaii who taught the urban studio class.
Ideas ranged from adding more greenery and creating a walking trail to redesigning building facades to reflect the 1940s or 1950s character of the community, Williams said. Some students focused on how to fix the H-1 bifurcation of Liliha and concentrated on making its commercial corridor more appealing and the community safer, he said.
More details will be revealed at community meetings, which are tentatively set for May 2, May 18 and June 25.
With her district still reeling from the recession and the January closure of Hawaii Medical Center’s Liliha campus, Rep. Corinne Ching wants to get the architectural project moving.
"Masu’s Massive Plate Lunch, Mochi & Candies shop and the New Uptown Fountain all went down with the recession," she said.
About 1,000 workers lost their jobs in the Hawaii Medical Center closure, which also affected surrounding businesses, Ching said.
Business at the original L&L Drive-Inn in Liliha has dropped off 10 percent or more since the HMC closure, said Eddie Flores Jr., who along with Johnson Kam opened the store in 1976 at the site of the old L&L Dairy in the heart of his boyhood home.
"When the hospital closed it hurt our sales. A lot of our customers were from there, and we are hoping that it will open again," Flores said.
Flores is confident that Liliha’s L&L will survive; however, he welcomes community revitalization, which would spruce up the neighborhood and attract positive reinvestment. In recent years vacant properties have grown more dilapidated and some familiar storefronts have disappeared as older generations have retired and their children moved away.
While closures and tear-downs have been controversial, Flores said that Liliha’s L&L saw a boost in business when Longs Drugs came into the neighborhood and Finance Factors redeveloped the corner of Liliha and Kuakini streets.
"There seemed to be a lot more activity," he said.
Even so, Flores is skeptical that Liliha could attract droves of visitors.
"There’s not enough there to see," he said, but admits that visitors often drop by the Liliha L&L to take pictures at what was the first location for the now 200-restaurant chain.
The success of Hawaii Food Tours is proof that tourism can bring opportunities to Liliha, Ching said.
Matthew Gray, who started Hawaii Food Tours in 2004, brings vanloads of tourists to Liliha Bakery six times a week.
While Liliha has many charms, Gray’s primary motivation for visiting is the bakery, which sells up to 7,200 of its buttery, sweet coco puffs daily.
"I believe Peter Kim, the owner of Liliha Bakery, is extremely thankful for the business that we give him," Gray said.
Mike McCartney, Hawaii Tourism Authority president and CEO, said Liliha’s efforts to boost tourism are giving visitors a chance to enjoy the "authentic experience" that they increasingly crave.
"Liliha is an example of a place that people can visit and connect with our history, our people and our community," McCartney said. "When tourism experiences are generated by the community, they are appreciated by our visitors."
In addition to ventures like Gray’s, Ching envisions tours built around Liliha’s historic and cultural sites which reflect its relationship with Hawaii’s royalty and with the state’s many immigrants. She is trying to move a resolution requesting that the state Department of Transportation and the city Department of Transportation Services revise their signage to "Historic Liliha Town."
Efforts also are under way to mark at least seven Liliha locations with signs from the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau’s warrior marker program, which identifies locations of significant interest to locals and visitors, said Deborah Bossley, Ching’s legislative aide for preservation.
Some of the first to be recognized could include the Palama Settlement, Ma‘ema‘e Chapel, L&L Drive-Inn, Soto Zen Buddhist Mission, Liliha Bakery, Liliha Barber Shop and Kunawai Springs Park, Bossley said.
"From that point we’ll identify merchants that want to buy into the transformation," she said. "The key is to get the community to recognize its own history."
HUD brought UH’s architecture students and Liliha stakeholders together to begin transforming the community into a place where people can live, work and shop, said Ryan T. Okahara, HUD’s Honolulu Field Office director.
HUD has a Sustainable Community program that provides funding to help neighborhoods spruce up local businesses, improve community housing and attract new investment, Okahara said.
"Right now Liliha is not in that category, but we can say that HUD helps communities that want to revitalize," he said.
The current push to better Liliha builds on efforts that Ching spearheaded in 2008 to transform the bullet-ridden and graffiti-tagged Henry Ho building into the Liliha Town Center. The circa-1956 building’s new pink-and-green exterior brings pride to Liliha residents, Ching said.
Longtime Liliha resident Jocelyn "Jenn" Ho, whose family ran Jerry’s Fountain in the block that is now the Liliha Town Center, said that she’s "glad to see it fixed up."
Ho remembers a time when Catholic school girls from St. Theresa School used to turn on the jukebox and dance in the parking lot.
"It must have been really something," Ching said.
While Liliha had a glorious past, in recent years it had led a checkered existence. Shortsighted development stripped the district of many of its charming old plantation homes and paved entire stretches of green space. New generations moved out, older generations did not have the ability to reinvest and crime started taking over.
The town center provides the community with a place to fight these negative trends, said Ching.
"It’s also a stopping-off place for tourists who want an old-Hawaii experience," she said.
Early efforts to generate pride and interest in the community already have made a difference, Ching said. Several tired businesses have been repainted, Chinese orchid trees and other foliage bloom along Liliha sidewalks, and there are outdoor cafes and benches where residents and visitors can rest. The clock tower in the Finance Factors redevelopment serves as a community anchor, and Scenic Hawaii has recognized the Longs Drugs and Henry Ho buildings with community improvement awards. Visitors also are increasing at Liliha’s Candlelight Tour and the I Love Liliha and Gingerbread festivals.
The increase in community pride has brought younger residents and better demographics to the neighborhood, said Alan Lum, who will celebrate 35 years of ownership this week at B&A Automotive, the business that he runs with his twin brother, Brian.
"I’ve started to see a lot more young people coming around," Lum said. "It’s been real good for business. The neighborhood was aging before. We were sad because we were losing some of our older customers."
Noe Pegarido, a project designer and associate at the architectural firm Wimberly, Allison, Tong and Goo, became part of Liliha’s transformation when he moved his family there two years ago.
"It feels like a small town as opposed to a new suburban development," Pegarido said. "It has good schools, and it’s the kind of place where you can walk your dog and say hi to the neighbor next door."
Pegarido, who got a sneak peek at UH’s urban studio projects when he volunteered to critique them, said he’s excited to see how they will play out in the community.
"Some of their projects took a quick focus, and others took more of a visionary architectural approach that provided a great vision of what the place could be in the future if we look beyond just applying paint," he said.
In the next decade, Liliha improvements will become more important as its proximity to the urban core attracts more residents, Pegarido said.
"It will be a thriving community," he said. "Hopefully, it will retain its charm."
