Ron Iwami wasn’t sure in 2005 that taking on the state’s Hawaii Community Development Authority and original "Big Five" member Alexander & Baldwin Inc. was something he should do.
The agency and company had just announced plans to significantly redevelop Kakaako Makai — including parts of Kewalo Basin, where he had been a regular surfer for more than three decades — and he wasn’t happy about it.
As Iwami explained in his book "Save Our Kaka‘ako: A Story of the Power of the People," released in May, he was holding down two jobs (one as a captain with the Honolulu Fire Department, the other as owner of a small landscaping business) and he was raising two teenagers with his wife, Cathy (then a teacher at Maryknoll School).
He had little spare time and was worried he might get fired from his firefighting job were he to publicly challenge A&B’s plan to pay $50 million for 36.5 acres of HCDA land on the Ewa side of the Kewalo Basin channel and build three 200-foot-tall residential towers, along with a 45-foot-high pedestrian walkway across that same channel.
Iwami said some friends thought he would be crazy to lead such an effort against the estimated $650 million project, so he asked his wife and mother what they thought. Both said he should do what he believes in.
"With those words of encouragement," he wrote in his book, "I entered a period in my life that I will never forget."
Iwami went on to form Friends of Kewalos, a nonprofit organization that, with other citizen groups, successfully opposed the A&B project and even got the Legislature to pass a law in 2006 banning residential development in Kakaako Makai.
The protective effort continues, as there have been repeated attempts since that could impede public access to the oceanfront land of Kakaako Makai, including Kewalo Basin.
Iwami, 59, now is retired from the fire department. He is a graduate of Roosevelt High School and the University of Hawaii, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business management. A resident of Manoa, he still surfs at Kewalos almost every day.
"Not on the weekends," he added, "I let the weekend warriors have it. I’m semi-retired, so I can come on the weekdays when they can’t."
Question: Who is the community that Friends of Kewalos is representing?
Answer: Basically, we were founded in 2005, and it started with surfers like myself who pretty much surfed at Kewalos religiously daily, early morning, dawn patrol, to the mid-morning to the afternoon to the evening. That was basically the start of Friends of Kewalos.
But as we organized and held rallies regarding development coming, non-surfer people —from regular park users to elderly, all ages and races — joined our cause. It grew to the regular, everyday people who do not want the shoreline to be built out to prevent public access.
Q: Do you have a board of directors and do you have regular meetings?
A: Yes, we are a 501c(3), and we have a board of directors, seven of us: president, treasurer, secretary …
Q: Does the group have a budget, and if so, how is the money raised?
Q: Our major fundraising is once a year. We do a cleanup at Kewalo Basin Park, and also a fundraiser at the same time where we sell Friends of Kewalos T-shirts, caps … Even my book is a fundraiser. Or people just out of their good hearts donate to us. … We’re kind of barebones, I would say, but we survive. We survive enough like where we printed red “Save Our Kakaako” T-shirts for our rally purposes, where we marched at the Capitol, and anything with exposure, we printed it and gave it out for free. Our budget allows that.
Q: You guys were called the redshirts, right?
A: Yeah, back in 2006 at that legislative session, that’s what we were known as. But the “Save Our Kakaako” shirts came off the Save Our Kakaako Coalition, which was a spin-off of Friends of Kewalos.
What happened was, we organized in May 2005 because we heard of an impending development coming … and it was coming fast. So we, the board of Friends of Kewalos, decided, hey, we should have a rally to educate the people. So we had a rally. There were about 150 people there, right at Kewalo Basin Park, and then we realized at that point that we needed more than 150 people to stop this thing, so we decided to form a coalition, and that’s how the Save Our Kakaako Coalition was born.
We called organizations like Save Our Surf, Hawaii State Body Surfing, Da Hui, Keep the Country Country — organizations that were already established with their followings but would be interested in our cause. … It even included the Kakaako Neighborhood Board. The whole community was behind us, and I think that’s what was responsible for our success. That’s why I call my book “The Story of the Power of the People.”
Q: What is the main concern of the group right now?
A: What concerns us now is three developments coming to Kewalo Basin that will affect us directly so far as access, and parking and traffic and everything.
The biggest one right now is where the Kewalo Lunch wagon and McWayne Marine Supply used to be. As you enter Kewalo Basin, there’s a surface parking lot now that runs toward the ocean. They want to build on that site.
Q: Is that where they’ve talked about the Japanese wedding chapel?
A: That’s the one. It’s a very futuristic-looking thing. …
Q: And you guys didn’t like that?
A: No, we didn’t, because … if you just look at it, it doesn’t belong there.
Q: What does belong there?
A: I think what belongs there is something that more the regular local people can use, because once you build a wedding chapel, it’s not going to go away. And it’s going to be for the Japanese.
Q: Can’t it be just open space?
A: Yes, that’s what we told HCDA. They’re the ones in control. We said that we’d like it to be all park, because if all those residences come up across the street (Ala Moana Boulevard), we’re going to need way more park space than we do now, because Ala Moana Park is already saturated with people. … So with 30,000 more residents coming — that’s what they predict coming when all the build-out is complete — where’s everybody going to go? And it is public land, it’s HCDA’s land, so the land should be used to benefit the public.
Q: The state Office of Hawaiian Affairs is involved in all this, too, right?
A: Yes. We’re involved with the Kakaa-ko Waterfront Park side and OHA’s land side (on the Ewa side of the Kewalo Basin channel) because the result of our opposition in 2006 was the law that said you cannot build any residential and you cannot sell any public land in Kakaako Makai. That to me was one of the most important things that came out of our opposition. It not only stopped the A&B project, it also brought out this law that stands today.
But now that OHA got the land, after this law was created … (it) twice tried to ask for exceptions to the law (to build residential projects). So we resurrected the coalition again and put on our red shirts and we went to the Capitol. We had rallies on Ala Moana Boulevard, and we were able to stop it again — twice. …
Early on, when they first got the land, they told us they would follow the Kakaako Makai conceptual master plan as much as they can. … Are you familiar with that plan?
Q: I’d like to say yes, but maybe you should tell me.
A: It was officially adopted by HCDA in 2011 as a model for all development in Kakaako Makai. It took four years to create, out of collaboration between the general public, developers, landowners, government, everything. I was a part of that process, too. We call it the Community Planning Advisory Council, or CPAC. That council was started back in 2007, as a directive from the Legislature telling HCDA to start a community group and to get input on what the people want in this area, to avoid what happened in 2006.
So what we did in 2006 helped develop a master plan and also develop the law. Those are very important things that, to me, are being pushed to the wayside. It cost $600,000 to develop that plan.
Q: How is it being pushed to the side?
A: Because, like I said, first OHA said they’re going to follow it, but yet, … as soon as they got the land, they asked for an exception to that law. They did it twice, and they said they’re going to do it again, next year, so we’re getting ready for that now. Because once we lose that law, and allow them to build, then Kamehameha Schools will want to build, because they have all those car lots over there on Ala Moana Boulevard, on the makai side, and the floodgates will open and before we know it, the law is nothing, there’s no law, and everybody’s building, and it becomes another Waikiki, which is our worst fear.
Q: Do you like the Howard Hughes Corp. plans for the basin in general?
A: Well, they didn’t really go into detail, but they have the lease for the harbor itself — I think it’s a 35-year lease with a 10-year option — and they have to spend $20 million of their own money to fix up all the dilapidated piers and slips, so we think it’s good, because the boaters will benefit from it. But the thing we’re not really too keen about is the 100 more boat slips that they plan to put in, so that’s going to create more density in the harbor.
Q: And there’s something about a wave-abatement idea?
A: Yeah, we’re kind of opposed to that because it will create backwash that will go to the surf spot, for the body surfers and where we surf at the point. With all their professional witnesses, they say that it can work. But nobody knows. Only time will tell.
Q: What about that wedding chapel thing on the Ewa side of the channel? It seemed like all of a sudden it was there.
A: See? That’s what we don’t want to happen at the McWayne site. It just doesn’t belong there. CPAC, our community group, was consulted when they were planning that, and we tried our very best to get it to be what we wanted to see there. And that’s the result. But they did bring down the size of it by one whole floor, and we told them we want a promenade to be in front of your chapel, and they said OK. So they set their building back 20 feet to accommodate the promenade.
I want to bring that up because one of the most popular concepts of the (CPAC) master plan was a shoreline promenade, so that from Ala Moana Park you could walk to Kewalo Basin Park, go around the harbor and come out by the old Fisherman’s Wharf, continue on and connect to the Kakaako Waterfront Park existing promenade.
Q: What is your vision for the Kewalo Basin area generally?
A: I would like to see, No. 1, the two empty lots, where the marine mammal lab used to be, right at the point, to be all park space, maybe another pavilion, because the view is so beautiful from there. HCDA said those two lots will be park. So we’re happy about that. But we’re unhappy about the four-story Japanese development coming, because it goes all the way to those two lots. … (HCDA) said it costs about $800,000 to a million to maintain all the parks in Kakaako Makai … so they need income (from leasing its land to the wedding chapel) to pay that bill. (But) that’s a very poor, short-sighted reason to develop the last oceanfront land. …
We said one thing you could do is maybe turn over the park maintenance to the city, which already maintains Ala Moana Park and already has a maintenance department in place. I told them, if you don’t want to do that, or it can’t be done, all these developers coming — Howard Hughes and whoever — assess them impact fees to help pay for the park maintenance because the residents who are going to buy into their developments will, guaranteed, be using the park. So we gave them two solutions, but they’ve not taken it.
Q: So you guys have your hands full for the next few years, right?
A: Yeah, you got that right. If OHA follows through on what they say and again asks for an exception to the law, we’ll fight it tooth and nail.
I cannot retire. (Laughter) I’m in this for love. This is my passion. To save the place for the future.
One point I want to stress: Some people think it’s just a bunch of surfers trying to take care of their backyard, their surf spot, and that’s true to some point. But that’s not all what we’re doing. We’re trying to protect it for everyone, for future generations. Being an island state, we’re surrounded by the ocean. Thousands of people use the ocean every day. It’s something that makes Hawaii special, and that’s what we’re trying to protect, this ocean lifestyle, because once you build all the way to the ocean and impede access, that lifestyle is slowly going to go away and we lose our identify of who we are as people of Hawaii. That’s the big picture.
