Bishop Museum to keep Waipio Valley land

Bishop Museum is no longer offering its 537 acres of Waipio Valley land for sale on Hawaii island’s north shore.

The decision reverses a 2016 plan by the museum’s board of directors to sell the picturesque Waipio Valley land along with the 15-acre Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethno­botanical Garden in Kealakekua.

The combined assets were estimated to be worth around $10 million in 2016.

While the Amy B.H. Greenwell property could still be sold, the decision to retain the Waipio Valley property means “our financials are definitely getting more settled down,” said Melanie Ide, Bishop Museum’s president and CEO. “It’s good news. We’re in a building mode. We’re leaving the survival mode and moving into a building mode. We’ve done the hard work to get stabilized and be in a better position to grow.”

Keeping the Waipio Valley property in Bishop Museum’s portfolio also represents stability for a hui of family taro farmers who lease the land from the museum.

Ide said some farmers have been working on one-year lease agreements, which makes it difficult for them to make long-term plans.

“You can’t farm under those kinds of conditions,” Ide said.

In a statement Thursday, Doug Genovia, a taro farmer whose family has leased Waipio Valley land from the museum for more than 50 years, said, “From my own experience as a Bishop Museum lessee over the past 30 years, it’s been on pretty shaky ground and a major concern has been for our future on the land. But in just the last year, there’s been a significant change, which makes me feel more hopeful of a brighter future for all of us who are Bishop Museum lessees. Together, with Bishop Museum’s leadership, I believe we have a much better chance now — to protect our cultural traditions and perpetuate Waipio as a ‘wahi pana.’”

Bishop Museum is the majority landowner in Waipio Valley and traces its ownership to Charles Reed Bishop, the husband of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop.

Following his wife’s death, Charles Reed Bishop helped establish Kamehameha Schools in 1887 and founded and endowed the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in 1889 as memorial to his wife, according to the Kameha­meha Schools website.

In 1897 Charles Reed Bishop wrote that he wanted the museum’s Waipio Valley land “protected perpetually, and that’s what we intend to do,” Ide said. “He specifically gave it to the museum to be protected perpetually.”

The museum board’s decision in 2016 to put the land up for sale followed years of financial hardship and tough decisions that led to layoffs of longtime museum employees.

“What caused the museum to make that decision in 2016 was really a function of not wanting to do — but having to make — some very, very tough decisions under what had been some serious financial pressures,” Ide said.

More recently the museum has enjoyed three consecutive “net positive” financial years, Ide said.

“Slowly and thoughtfully and carefully (we made it) through a combination of savings and re-investments and revenue generating while protecting our core to gradually move the needle in a positive direction to the point where we are stabilizing,” Ide said.

The museum still faces “financial pressures, but we’re now operating in a much better condition,” she said.

Some museum employees who had been furloughed a decade ago are now back at work, Ide said.

“We’re in a new place,” Ide said. “We’re absolutely in a new place.”