It can’t be fun for a speaker of the House to run into opposition from within the leadership to one of his own proposals. But that’s what’s happened to state Rep. Joe Souki.
The House speaker introduced two bills enabling the “conversion” of leasehold property for sale in fee simple to business tenants. Rep. Ryan Yamane, who chairs the House water and land panel, worried about its constitutionality.
Souki referenced the state’s Land Reform Act of 1967, which applied to residential land. In that instance, the major landholder, Bishop Estate, sued. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld it, finding that the law served the public good by breaking up the state’s “feudal land tenure system.”
Whether the court would have done the same here is uncertain.
Parklets great but goodbye parking
The jury’s still out on curbside “parklets,” but at least the idea shows out-of-the-box thinking. And as Honolulu’s urban core gets more dense, we’ll all need to be as creative as possible in sharing space.
Just signed into city law, a parklet would allow a business or organization to convert, for up to a year, a slice of public sidewalk and adjacent curbside parking into a small rest area with shade or green space.
It has potential in a highly urbanized “live, work, play” district, as Kakaako is envisioned to be. But because parklets take over on-street stalls, let’s hope other convenient parking will emerge nearby. Of course, if the Kakaako vision is fully realized, more folks would be walking and biking in this urban core.
