Column: Solutions for Chinatown should heed its character, people

Honolulu’s Chinatown was designated a National Register of Historic Places District in 1973. Its importance was further recognized and partially preserved through the designation of the area as a Special District by the City and County of Honolulu.

To an architect, the District holds obvious importance as the home of most of the brick buildings left in Hawaii, for its high concentration of stone buildings, and for its buildings that show a conscious effort to combine western and Asian building forms.

But to see only the forms and material is to miss the real importance of Chinatown — for its representation of part of the cultural heritage of Hawaii. In the aftermath of the mass demolitions that occurred for the freeway and in the name of urban renewal, this was plain to everyone at the time of its designation.

When our office first moved into Chinatown in 1982 it was run down, with a score of pornography shops, and with drug trafficking and prostitution obvious all around us.

About 1983 the last restaurant that was open at night closed, leaving all of downtown/Chinatown without a single place to eat at night.

Today, 35 years later, it is hard to imagine that could have been the case, given all of the restaurants and bars that exist in the District.

During our 16 years in the District, we saw gradual but continuous improvements through the efforts of a few brave small developers and owners who improved buildings, and through the City and County redeveloping formerly barren parking lots into places for housing, which brought people to live in the District.

Each of the city’s redevelopments brought controversy and some level of pushback, since they were often out of scale with the general character of Chinatown.

Nonetheless, the people who came with those developments were important to helping bring life back to an otherwise neglected area.

THE CHALLENGE today is a bit more subtle than it was three decades ago. The devil truly is in the details, for not understanding and respecting those details will lead to a slow and irrevocable deterioration of the resource.

One small example: When the city decided that street trees are good (which they generally are) but then installed them in an area that never had them and for which things like sidewalk canopies and already narrow sidewalks are an intrinsic conflict, they changed an essential character-defining feature of the District.

And each time historic Chinese granite pavers are saw-cut and discarded like so much old concrete to install those trees, something is taken away from Chinatown that cannot be replaced.

More recently, the city has decided, against the wishes of many of the long-time merchants and owners in Chinatown, to install planters, vertical plastic markers and to paint roadways, further marring the historic appearance of Chinatown.

Each of these changes, however well-intentioned, contributes in a small way to diminishing of the character of the District.

Today the District faces another problem that threatens to reverse some of the considerable improvements that have been made: the rise of drug use and homelessness that has focused on some parts of the area. These problems are neither unique to Chinatown nor are they simple to address.

However, it is hoped that the solution for Chinatown will reflect the character of that historic area, and the best way to do that is for government agencies to work closely with the owners and merchants who know the place best.

Glenn Mason, current president of the Hawaii Architectural Foundation, has built his 40-year career in the preservation of historic buildings and new design.