Lee Cataluna: Hopefully a new start for Kakaako

Imagine getting ownership of 41 acres of prime Honolulu shoreline property for free, plus a check for $2.25 million to spend on repairs and improvements.

The City and County of Honolulu scored big with the Kakaako Waterfront land transfer from the state HCDA that goes into effect today.

Of course, the deal comes with the huge burden of responsibility for an area that has been a trouble spot for large homeless encampments and crimes of vandalism and violence.

The city points out that its crews, along with police and homeless outreach programs, have been clearing, cleaning and patrolling the area for years, but now, having all the land parcels around Kaka­ako Waterfront Park to Kewalo as city property simplifies matters. The Honolulu City Council has funded more parks department positions, including park rangers — some of which will help to keep an eye on the Kakaako area.

Credit goes to the city for being willing to say, “OK we’ll do it. It’s ours.”

Also credit the city for making sure the park looked good for the news conference, especially compared with when it was all tents and bike parts and skinny dogs, back when parents were afraid to take their kids into the Children’s Discovery Center.

“We are doing better,” Mayor Kirk Caldwell said at the news conference. “It’s not perfect. You can see we have some homeless on one side of Ilalo Street right now, but it’s better. But if we’re going to do that kind of work on land that’s not ours, it doesn’t make sense.”

Michelle Nekota, city parks director, said her department was excited for the opportunity of taking over those 41 acres, and predicted that in three to five months, Kakaako Waterfront will look amazing.

“The trees will be trimmed, we’ll have planted new trees, we’ll have repaved the parking lot as well as renovated the comfort stations and repaired the irrigation system, and hopefully, the grass will be much greener as well,” Nekota said.

“Now we need the whole community to come together to help motivate and activate these areas so that the parks are fully utilized,” said Marc Alexander, executive director of the city Office of Housing. (Seems like an accessible playground between the medical school and the Children’s Discovery Center on that newly planted and patrolled green grass would be just perfect, right?)

It will be easy to judge whether this is a success. It’s not some esoteric policy thing or imprecise tally of homeless people that doesn’t seem to line up with what you see on the streets. It’s a park with grass and restrooms and parking — all visible and tangible. In three to five months, it will no doubt look all spiffed up. But keep your eye on the place after the initial promises have aged a bit, and keep your eye on whether the problem has just moved someplace else.

If they do what they say they’re going to do, it could be really fantastic, a reclaiming of public land in a city where too many well-known landmarks like Diamond Head and Hanauma are just getting run over. If somebody happened to be looking for a brag-worthy legacy project that didn’t tick off legions of locals, this could be it.