By David Cheever

Special to the Star-Advertiser

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a vast and complex federal government agency affecting almost every American. NOAA says its responsibilities reach from “the surface of the sun to the ocean floor.”

As an island state, NOAA is especially important for Hawaii: hurricane weather forecasting, protection of ocean fisheries, tsunami warnings, humpback whale protection, conservation of coastal marine ecosystems, general weather forecasting and much, much more.

Because of its multiple arms and legs, NOAA had line offices and facilities in many locations on Oahu. It should be noted that NOAA operates statewide but does its major business on Oahu. In an attempt to consolidate many of these operations in one place, the architectural firm of Ferraro Choi was engaged in 1998 to design a new NOAA office and laboratory complex for the National Marine Fisheries Service to meet the requirements of the new LEED sustainable design system adjacent to the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus.

After this project was designed, but before construction started, a decision was made at NOAA’s office in Washington, D.C., to consolidate all Oahu line offices, including its ship operations. The NMFS facility, while well designed and well intended, was landlocked and therefore lacked a critical NOAA requirement — piers to dock its two sizable ocean-research ships. NOAA officials and the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye had another idea, and that was to see if two existing but underutilized piers on the west side of Ford Island could be incorporated into a new facility that could accommodate the agency’s vessels plus many of its other products and services. Onshore of the piers were two huge World War II Army Air Force airplane hangars that were designed by the famed architect Albert Kahn and built in 1943.

In the early 2000s there was competition for this Ford Island shoreside land because a developer was hired by the Navy to master-plan a sizable housing community for its service personnel. In fact, there was serious consideration given to tearing down the historic hangars to make way for the housing. Thankfully that did not happen. Between the Navy, NOAA, Hawaii’s congressional delegation and several preservation organizations, a plan was developed to design a NOAA complex on Ford Island that would consolidate its many divisions and repurpose the two WWII hangars.

Once that decision was made, the architecture firm HOK, with 25 global offices, was hired to design a building that would provide offices, meeting rooms, labs, a library and even a sizable emergency room for treating injured ocean animals. It had to also honor the important historic role of Ford Island in the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor.

As a Hawaii-based design partner, and because of its previous work for NOAA in Hawaii and the National Science Foundation research station at the South Pole, Ferraro Choi became part of the architectural team. To assist with the historical perspective of the project, the collaborating architects hired the local firm Mason Architects, one of the region’s leading preservation architectural firms.

From the beginning, a consortium of seven preservation organizations reviewed the proposed designs as part of their ongoing review of all projects at the Pearl Harbor National Historic Landmark. They were: the National Park Service; the State Historic Preservation Division; the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation; Historic Hawai‘i Foundation; Office of Hawaiian Affairs; the National Trust for Historic Preservation; and the Navy’s preservation office.

The concept was to restore the two historic hangars (designated buildings 175 and 176) that faced each other and connect them with a new building between. The plan also called for including a smaller Army-era warehouse (130), a former warehouse (185), Building 166 and the two piers. Those structures, plus the historic landscape, created a 30-acre NOAA campus that stretches from the shoreline by the piers to the old Ford Island runway. The overall objective of all projects on Ford Island is to treat the island holistically and maintain the relationship to the other historic properties.

The shape and exterior surfaces of the original hangars were kept along with critical architectural details, such the external historic floodlights running the length of the rooflines. Inside, two of the giant airplane doors were restored but most were preserved by sliding them back into the original side pockets. The present-day need for ventilation inside the repurposed hangars led to the design of rectangular boxes on the roofs that have an industrial look in keeping with the whole island.

This was an enormous project covering 375,000 square feet under roof. It took a great deal to create this project and thanks to Inouye’s assistance, the federal government provided a quarter of a billion dollars to fund it. Thus it is named the NOAA Daniel K. Inouye Regional Center.

The result is a stunning example of historic preservation and adaptive reuse for a critical federal agency.