Mahalo for supporting Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Enjoy this free story!
Moving the site of a proposed inclusive children’s playground from Ala Moana Regional Park to Kakaako Waterfront Park will cause suffering to children with special needs by making them wait longer to enjoy the first such playground in Hawaii, said Tiffany Vara, executive director of Pa‘ani Kakou, a nonprofit that has pledged to build the playground with private money and give it to the city.
She was responding to Resolution 19-263, passed Tuesday by the Honolulu City Council Committee on Parks, which asks the city to find alternative sites.
Committee members Ann Kobayashi and Heidi Tsuneyoshi said earlier this week that Kakaako Waterfront Park would be ideal because the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center is there, and the acre of grassy open space in Ala Moana Park would remain as is.
In phone interviews on Friday, Vara and Mayor Kirk Caldwell said they rejected that idea.
Vara said Pa‘ani Kakou couldn’t offer the same public-private deal in the waterfront park. “It’s really only viable and necessary if we’re going to build a restroom and a concession, and there’s not enough foot traffic for a vendor to break even.”
“We’re going forward with this,” the mayor said of the Ala Moana site. “It’s being paid for by the private sector. Most people would be appreciative we’re not using taxpayer dollars.”
Caldwell, who had just finished his regular jog around Ala Moana and Kakaako Waterfront parks, said he had seen only two people in the latter while the former had “lots of people” as befitted “the most heavily used park in the state.”
In response to demands by some regular users that the playground be sited elsewhere, Caldwell described how, since it opened in 1934, Ala Moana has added buildings, tennis courts, a lawn bowling green, the beach, Magic Island and a beach volleyball court. “As the city has evolved, the park has evolved,” he said, stressing the recent change in Kakaako from an industrial to residential zone.
Vara said a new location would cause delay by requiring a new environmental impact statement, noting the waterfront park is built on landfill, and “time matters for a lot of these families.”
She was speaking from experience: One of her children, Abbie Vara, who had physical disabilities, died in 2015 at age 13.
Vara said she wished Abbie could have “experienced swinging or weightlessness” in an inclusive playground.
“It shouldn’t take that long,” Kobayashi said of a new EIS, noting that the current EIS for Ala Moana Park would provide some foundation. “It’s just a different location.”
The current location, Ala Moana Park, is just across the street from the luxury Park Lane condominium, developed by The MacNaughton Group and The Kobayashi Group.
Vara, who owns and resides in a Park Lane apartment with her husband, is a Pa‘ani Kakou board member, along with Ian MacNaughton and Alanna Kobayashi Pakkala of the respective development groups.
Now that the Ala Moana playground plan has been approved, she said, the nonprofit will form a new board, including parents and professionals who serve children with diverse issues, and begin raising funds.
From 9 a.m. to noon today, community groups Malama Moana and Save Ala Moana Beach Park will hold a rally in support of moving the playground elsewhere in Kakaako.
74