Parklets show promise as community builders

A reading lounge, a pool and a garden took the place of parked cars on city streets in urban Honolulu on Friday as part of a demonstration project that showed what’s possible under a proposed city program converting street parking spaces into public recreation space.

Several companies and nonprofit organizations created “parklets” in nine locations around downtown Honolulu and Kakaako, transforming metered parking stalls into spaces where pedestrians could hang out.

The administration of Mayor Kirk Caldwell has embraced the concept, which has become popular in San Francisco and other cities, and produced draft regulations for how parklets can be established mainly in commercial areas on Oahu if the City Council passes a pending bill to amend the traffic code.

“There is a lot of interest in it,” said Mark Garrity, deputy director of the city Department of Transportation Services. “We’re really responding to public interest in this. We’re happy to try and permit it.”

The demonstration project was organized by nonprofit groups and businesses including The Trust for Public Land, and held on what has been dubbed PARK(ing) Day.

Outside the storefront of This Is It Bakery on Cooke Street in Kakaako, Greener Reader and Better Block Hawaii/88 Block Walks set up a sort of reading lounge that included a coffee table, chairs, a ficus plant and small bookcases filled with books.

Daniel Simonovich of Better Block said a good number of people passing by stopped to learn about the parklet concept that he anticipates the city will permit.

“It was good,” he said. “We were able to talk to people about the idea.”

Outside Wing Ice Cream Parlor on Maunakea Street downtown, owner Miller Royer’s idea was to open a public pool in a parking stall outside his store by filling the bed of his truck with water. He also arranged for a band to play music.

And a garden setting was created by planning firm HHF Planners downtown outside the Dillingham Transportation Building on Bishop Street. The firm reused materials including wooden pallets to create planters and benches under a trellis hung with bougainvillea clippings collected as green waste from a residential community.

Erin Higa, marketing coordinator at HHF, said the event was a success. “It’s having a dialogue about making a parking stall into a public space people can enjoy.”

Garrity said the predecessor to PARK(ing) Day was an event in the 1990s when some architecture students in San Francisco put money into a parking meter and occupied the space with some Astroturf, lawn chairs and pink flamingo statues “as sort of a rebellious art project.”

The formal creation in 2005 of the annual PARK(ing) Day on the third Friday in September is credited to the San Francisco art collective Rebar.

In Honolulu a parklet pilot project was created last year by Kamehameha Schools outside Hank’s Haute Dogs on Coral Street in Kakaako, with shaded seating occupying a couple of parking spaces. Kamehameha Schools pays the city for use of the stalls under a permit similar to one that contractors can obtain for parking construction equipment or vehicles.

A parklet permit program would be authorized via Bill 59, also known as the “complete streets” bill, pending before the City Council.

The Department of Transportation Services and city Department of Planning and Permitting have created draft regulations for parklets as “temporary” installations that can be in place for months or years.

Under the draft regulations, parklets must be free and open for public use. Commercial uses such as advertising or seating reserved for neighboring business customers aren’t permitted, though a restaurant with an adjacent storefront could set up a parklet with tables that customers could use as long as service isn’t provided to the tables.

To establish a parklet, a person or organization would need to submit an application to the Department of Transportation Services with design details, photos of the location and letters of support from adjoining property owners or tenants.

Other proposed requirement include having a 42-inch-high barrier along the street edge, complying with the Americans With Disabilities Act, making a neighborhood board presentation and having $2 million in liability insurance. Under the bill, the Department of Transportation Services director would have the option to waive the typical parking space rental charge for parklets.

Not all public parking spaces would be suitable for parklets, the draft guidelines state.

The draft guidelines say that parklets may take many forms — such as places to sit and people-watch or read, park bicycles or even extend pedestrian paths where sidewalks are too narrow — and can improve the sense of community in an area and help invigorate businesses.