After living in the Sea Country subdivision in Maili for about seven years, Melissa Lauer said she’s disappointed that the well-utilized, 11-acre city-run park in the center of the community remains mostly unchanged and still lacks restroom facilities.
"We want our kids to stay out of trouble, and yet we don’t afford them a place to stay out of trouble," said Lauer, 54. "We make program after program, and yet we don’t give them the most basic area to fulfill the need to play and have a good family outlet."
Lauer, whose husband serves as Sea Country’s general manager, said subdivision leadership has been in touch with the neighborhood board, which has been in touch with the Honolulu City Council for years, but little has been done to improve the popular park.
"The west side tends to get third billing at best, and, you know, here’s a community that is developed nicely. It’s not what people typically think of when they think of the west side, and it’s a very, very close-knit community," Lauer said. "When people drive two hours out of their day to get to and from work, they want to come home and be able to utilize the area that they support financially."
This year Councilwoman Kymberly Pine said she included $505,000 in the city budget to pay for restrooms and landscaping improvements.
"We’re finally going to put bathrooms there," Pine said. "When I took office in January, we really wanted to see how the district was being treated by city government, and we identified this park as (one of) the greatest injustices on the island. We felt that it was unacceptable that the city put a park in and … that there’s no bathroom."
Developer D.R. Horton, as part of its zoning agreement for the 800-home project that began around 2005, donated the park to the city and was required to grass four of the 11 acres. A day care center was also built and donated as part of the agreement.
Mike Jones, president of D.R. Horton’s Hawaii division, said the company has always been willing to talk with the city about offering help, but ultimately "it’s the city’s kuleana to kind of deal with what they want to do with the park out there."
"They’ve been very generous and very community-minded," Lauer said of the developer. "So I don’t doubt that they would be very helpful (in) developing that area for the community."
The city’s director of parks and recreation said the Maili park hasn’t been targeted for neglect and is merely a victim, along with others around the island, of budget woes.
"I think that during the last administration that they just didn’t have the funds to do it," Toni Robinson said. "And I don’t believe any new comfort station was included anywhere.
"That park is definitely one of the first ones we would get a comfort station for once we have the funding to do it," Robinson said.
Lauer said, and many others confirmed, that Waianae-based portable-toilet vendor Paradise Lua Inc. has been donating restroom facilities for football games at the park.
"The park is highly utilized," Lauer said. "On a weekend during football it is jammed with kids, parents, the whole bit. Many times I see the football coaches and people that are involved with that mowing it themselves. The grass is spotty at best. There is a complete 2-foot drop-off on the side of the park that is adjacent to where the keiki center is. … It just — plunk — drops off. They’ve made no effort to finish it off or anything along that line."
Lauer said it took years for the city to begin and complete various sporting facilities on the land, and that "the so-called parking lot is a big dirt area, so every time the cars come in and try to park there … it either turns into a dust storm or a mud bath."
"We have all kinds of interaction with neighbors and families doing family things, and they’re trying to do it in a substandard park," Lauer said. "And we’re mad about it."
