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Security cameras aimed at deterring vandals have been installed at the city’s Kaiaka Bay Beach Park in Haleiwa as part of a recently completed $337,000 repair and renovation project for the comfort station and other areas there.
In addition, security gates have been installed so the facility can be locked when the park closes Wednesday and Thursday nights, city officials said.
The comfort station was closed in January 2014 after vandals torched it. After the city put portable toilets near the damaged comfort station in 2016, they were set on fire as well. The comfort station’s closure forced the city to stop issuing permits for the park’s seven campsites.
Mayor Kirk Caldwell reopened the comfort station and the campsites Friday. He said the arson “unnecessarily cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
The camera system installed at Kaiaka is similar to one installed near two Ala Moana Beach Park comfort stations in November following a spate of vandalism there. Neither facility has been trashed since, city spokesman Jesse Broder Van Dyke said.
The Kaiaka project, by MJ Construction Inc., included replacing a flat roof with a sloped, shingled one, upgrading toilets and plumbing, installing new light fixtures and painting the interior.
