Park plan should be permanent

The people have spoken. The mayor has listened. For now.

It is encouraging that Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell acknowledges getting the message loud and clear that Oahu residents want Ala Moana Beach Park to be spruced up, but not developed or commercialized. The city’s nine-point community action plan is a welcome one, focused on improving and beautifying existing elements of the 119-acre stretch along Ala Moana Boulevard that is an essential oasis in urban Honolulu.

At 81 years old, the park is showing its age and deserves some tender loving care. There is nary a point to contradict in the mayor’s plan to renovate the comfort stations, replenish rocky areas of the beach, irrigate the great lawn, repair the exercise path, plant trees, install a playground, upgrade lighting and enhance other security measures, increase park staff so that the improvements are well maintained, and hire popular local vendors for the concession stands. Most of the upgrades should be completed by May 2017.

The worrisome aspect is that the mayor persists in describing the effort as a short-term community action plan, when this approach should be the permanent one, in perpetuity, forever.

If Ala Moana Beach Park, including Magic Island, is truly to remain “the people’s park” as nearby Kakaako rapidly redevelops into a largely luxury residential enclave, it will take a strong statement from city leaders that this park is off limits for commercial development — for the long term.

We applaud the city for seeking broad public input into the future of the park, and the mayor for listening. But it is important to take the next step and confirm that this vision of a safer, accessible, more beautiful and largely uncommercialized community park will not fade once the city proceeds with a longer-term $1.2 million master plan. There will be another round a community meetings about that in the fall, and Oahu residents must stay engaged on this issue, to exert the same kind of positive influence they have in the short term.

Since launching the Ala Moana Park planning project in March, the city has received more than 30,000 responses from the public, including 585 unique ideas, 2,800 poll responses and 7,800 “thumbs up” to ideas posted on www.ouralamoanapark.com, according to the city.

The input helped establish eight guiding principles that were used to develop the community action plan and will help serve as a compass in drafting the longer-term master plan. That’s reassuring, especially since the very first guiding principle is “keeping Ala Moana the ‘People’s Park’.”

But other guiding principles — such as “enhancing the park’s features” and “sustaining the public’s investment” — seem to open the door to the type of development and commercial operations that the public clearly stated it does not want. And there’s no denying that the city could be enticed at the prospect of rent, fees or taxes such operations could provide.

So now is the time to draw the line in the sand, as it were. Before all the luxury high-rises in Kakaako are built, towers that will look upon Ala Moana Beach Park as their backyard. Before the population explodes in Kakaako, and this rare and popular open park space between Waikiki and Kakaako becomes even more heavily utilized.

Now is the time for city leaders to affirm, the mayor in particular, that Ala Moana Beach Park is too valuable to the residents of this crowded island as it is to ever be commercialized. We don’t need a restaurant there, or a concrete concert venue, or shops or stores. We need simply to take better care of Ala Moana Beach Park so that it continues to be the outdoor refuge this city sorely needs.