Waking up Waterfront

Though it was built on hills of trash, Kakaako Waterfront Park isn’t exactly a dump. Yet for most of its life, the state park has been viewed as underutilized, somewhat neglected and in need of enhancement to attract more public use.

The state agency that owns and manages the 30-acre park recently decided to create a master plan for improving the recreational area with more engaging and interactive facilities.

The Hawaii Community Development Authority earlier this month approved spending up to $600,000 for a consultant to prepare an environmental impact statement and master plan for "active use" facilities at the park and two neighboring parks: Kaka ako Makai Gateway Park and Kewalo Basin Park.

The agency’s board took the action four months after agreeing to consider an unsolicited proposal to lease nine acres of the main park to a company interested in establishing a commercial light display production restricted to paying customers.

Pursuing the master plan, which is estimated to take 18 months, effectively stalls the light display proposal by Illuminage Group Inc.

Anthony Ching, HCDA executive director, said a master plan was suggested after he received the bid by Illuminage and a number of other unsolicited proposals for park use including a volleyball academy, an art incubator and a preschool.

"We need to bring life to the park," he said, explaining that the park’s Ewa end hemmed in by a barbed-wire fence is particularly lifeless. "There’s really not much energy or activity there."

Some community members are critical of any plan that would commercialize pieces of the park.

"We believe he’s selling out," Michelle Matson, president of the Oahu Island Parks Conservancy, said about Ching.

Ching, however, said there is room to add active uses to the park while still providing much space for picnicking, walking, biking and other passive uses. Additionally, he said leasing some park land for commercial use would generate revenue to help pay for the roughly $1 million annual public cost to maintain the three parks.

"The park should have its own ability to sustain itself," he said. "We’re not going to put a Walmart or something (like that) in there."

Kakaako Waterfront Park is a relatively young urban Hono lulu park, created by HCDA in 1992. The agency added a 6-acre addition called Kaka ako Makai Gateway Park in 1998 between the main park’s 300-stall parking lot and Ala Moana Boulevard. 

A primary attraction of the main park is a roughly half-mile pedestrian promenade along a beachless waterfront that previously was rather inaccessible to the public. Most of the park, however, was built on an old city landfill and features asphalt paths snaking around big grassy hills rising up to 50 feet.

The design, while offering scenic views and access to surf spots, hasn’t proved to be a strong magnet for the public, especially compared with Ala Moana Beach Park and Kapiolani Park.

Many tables with benches at Kaka ako Waterfront Park encourage picnicking, but they also serve as hangouts and sleeping spots for the homeless.

To address the underwhelming recreational use of the park, HCDA solicited a master plan in 1998 "to create a one-of-a-kind urban park that will become an attraction and resource for the residents of Hawaii."

The agency approved spending $315,000 on the plan and awarded the job in 1999 to Wallace Roberts and Todd, a Philadelphia design firm that designed Fort DeRussy Park and the Hale Koa Hotel in Waikiki.

The firm’s plan, which was selected over two competing proposals, included boating lagoons, an expanded swimming cove or basin, a tidal pool and a blowhole, a new amphitheater, a flying carousel, a civic plaza, a wind turbine monument and public art. As a dramatic park entry feature, water jets would produce a wave in which children could play.

HCDA adopted the plan in 2000 and completed a feasibility study for an initial phase expected to cost no more than $2 million with the water wave and internally lit fiberglass seats giving the park a "heart."

Construction was expected to start in 2004, but instead the plan was shelved.

Since then HCDA has managed to eliminate a $950,000 park maintenance backlog that existed in 2005, and has persistently struggled with homeless occupations in and around the park.

Kakaako resident Michael Ferguson said in a Star-Advertiser letter to the editor earlier this month that Kaka ako Waterfront Park has become a "Third World park" from what he has seen over the last four years.

"It has gone from a pleasant walk to a disgrace," he said in the letter.

Matson with the Oahu Island Parks Conservancy agrees that improvements are needed but said a community-based conceptual plan already exists to guide park improvements.

The Kakaako Makai Conceptual Master Plan is a vision for Kakaako parks and several undeveloped adjacent HCDA parcels. However, a year after the conceptual plan was completed in 2011, the Legislature gave the undeveloped parcels to the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs. OHA is asking the Legislature to allow it to build condominiums on the 25 acres it owns in Kakaako Makai. 

The conceptual plan advocated expanding the park and using the undeveloped parcels for new public attractions including a surf museum, performing arts center and farmers market along with a limited amount of commercial retail and restaurant space. The plan also considered a Barack Obama presidential library and museum in the area.

Ching said a new master plan for the park space might incorporate elements in the 2011 conceptual plan, though he doesn’t think there is a need for park expansion given how much green space goes unused. "It doesn’t even work now," he said.