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The plan for the gleaming new Kakaako Waterfront Park was for the 30 acres to be an urban 24/7 park connecting Honolulu’s people with the sea.
As the park neared its 1992 opening, Larry Leopardi, project managing director with the Hawaii Community Development Authority, explained the park’s purpose.
“We want to open up the waterfront to bring it back to the people,” Leopardi said. “The governor’s goal was to make it people-oriented.”
According to a 1992 Honolulu Star-Bulletin report, the plan was to keep the park open at night. It would be a “passive park” where folks could stroll, picnic and just relax while taking in glorious views of Honolulu oceanfront, Waikiki skyline or the green Koolau backdrop.
The irony is that 25 years ago, an ambitious state administration led by Gov. John Waihee was working on not just plans to turn the one-time city dump into a graceful park of undulating hills and a dramatic seaside presence but also, as Leopardi predicted: “One day you will be able to walk from Aloha Tower into Ala Moana Park with the feeling that it is all part of a well thought-out plan.”
Gov. Waihee’s waterfront accomplishment has now become part of Gov. David Ige’s absolute failure.
As Ige campaigns for reelection, he may praise his administration’s work putting Honolulu’s homeless in housing — but measured against his administration’s decision to indefinitely shut Kakaako Waterfront Park because it is overrun with homeless people and has become a physical danger, it reveals a government collapse.
Kakaako Park has always had issues. Two years after it opened, Honolulu fourth-grader Katie Miura wrote to the Star-Bulletin in 1994, saying “all you see is brown grass, broken lights, graffiti and trash.”
Today’s problems soar in comparison to the woes of two decades ago.
Starting tonight at 10, the park is to be shut because of the danger of dog bites, fires and vandalism attributed to 180 homeless living in the park’s boundaries.
“It’s reached a point where we just can’t manage it,” said Jesse Souki, the current executive director of the Hawaii Community Development Authority, according to a Honolulu Star-Advertiser report. “Right now, with dog attacks and exposed wires and broken plumbing, it’s just not safe. We need to shut it down and take a pause.”
Repairs to the park are estimated to be at least $500,000. Homeless have disassembled light poles to splice into the power to run televisions and lights. There are broken pipes with leaking water and there are dangerous packs of dogs roaming the park.
“It’s reached a point where we just can’t manage it,” Souki said.
Two years ago homeless around the park swarmed the area, creating what officials called “one of the largest homeless encampments in the nation.”
Over the years, HCDA has toyed with some dubious schemes for Kakaako Waterfront Park, ranging from private-sponsored LED light shows to flattening the hills to put in volleyball courts. None of that is what the park is about. It is supposed to be an urban rest stop. A safe, pleasant city sanctuary where people can read, watch waves, play with their kids, put something on the hibachi and just enjoy living in a green spot next to the blue Pacific.
In many ways, the administration of David Ige has not been up to that promise or challenge.
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