Beach access coalition plans sign-waving outside Ko Olina over limited parking

Makakilo resident John Shockley is hoping new Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s administration will ensure Ko Olina fully reopens its four lagoon parking lots after closing them in March due to the COVID-19 shutdown and reopening them — at reduced 50% capacity — when tourism reopened in October.

“On a good beach day, a lot of families in these surrounding neighborhoods try to go to the Coves at Ko Olina, but they get iced out, with every other stall coned off in lot 1, by the Aulani resort, and lot 4, by the Marriott,” said the co-coordinator of the Free Access Coalition, which defends public access to Hawaii’s beaches. “We’re really hopeful that with the change in city government that law will prevail and the management at Ko Olina will reopen the parking 100%.”

But more than hoping, after nearly a year of discouragement, he said, the coalition will hold a sign-waving demo­n­stration on Farrington Highway near the entrance to the resort starting at 10 a.m. Sunday.

“We hope people will come out with signs and join the peaceful chorus of voices demanding that all the parking spaces be opened up, as they were before the coronavirus lockdown,” Shockley said, adding COVID-19 protocols would be followed, with participants wearing masks and standing beside their cars, parked at socially distanced intervals.

Jessica Waller, a microbiologist at Tripler Hospital and mother of a 6-year-old daughter who loved swimming at the calm Ko Olina lagoons, said she’ll be there Sunday with her banner.

“There were long lines for parking even before COVID,” said Waller, whose family now swims in the lagoon at Ala Moana Beach Park instead, rather than wait to gain access to the lagoons.

“My husband and I were shocked to see the lagoons were closed when we went back in September, when the city beaches reopened and we thought the Ko Olina beaches were public beaches and would be open, too.”

Waller contacted the city Department of Planning and Permitting and learned that Ko Olina primary developer Jeff Stone had received permission to develop the area on the condition that the beach be kept open to the public, with free parking provided.

In October, as it prepared to reopen to visitors, the Ko Olina resort was confronted by public outcry when it announced a new plan to ban the public from all the lagoons except Lagoon 4, with the rationale that public safety would be served by keeping residents and tourists separate.

Local residents, the resort management said, would have Lagoon 4 for their exclusive use.

In response to complaints from the public, the city issued a notice of violation to Ko Olina for its months-long closure of the public parking lots.

Before the city’s deadline to cure the violation, Stone, and the Ko Olina Community Association reached an agreement with then- Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell that the resort would allow public access at all four lagoons but would cut the number of available parking spaces to 111 from 180, reducing parking capacity at Lagoons 1 and 4 by 50% “to keep residents, visitors and employees safe.”

Waller was unconvinced. “I suspected the real reason couldn’t be public safety, because at city beach parking lots you don’t see every other space coned off,” Waller said.

In Shockley’s opinion, “Ko Olina has used this COVID shibai (sham) far too long to keep the local people away from the Ko Olina coves and their high-paying clientele,” he said.

Resort spokeswoman Sweetie Nelson strongly disagreed.

“It’s simply unbelievable that a small number of individuals insist on continuing this conversation amidst COVID infection rates that have not subsided, gatherings still limited to parties of five or less and violent protests across the country,” Nelson said in an email Thursday, noting that Free Access Coalition “has not been in direct touch” with the resort, but she had found inaccuracies in their Facebook posts.

Nelson stated that when Ko Olina reopened 111 parking stalls “in the private lagoon parking lots” to public use on Oct. 16, DPP declared Ko Olina in compliance with the terms of its Public Access Master Plan, which read, “Ko Olina is required to provide a minimum of 80 parking spaces, 20 spaces at each of the four lagoons.”

Regarding the coned-off parking spaces, “we are not social distancing cars as some referenced,” she said, adding that instead, “these measures are to assist in managing beach capacity during this time.”

Nelson said the resort was trying to maintain social distancing and mask-wearing for “thousands” of beachgoers, including locals, Ko Olina residents and guests, military families, tourists staying elsewhere on Oahu “and families who drop off guests but do not utilize the public parking stalls.”

Safely reopening on a larger scale was the resort’s priority, Nelson said.