All bets are off as to when and if Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s rail line is coming to Ala Moana.
Caldwell and City Council Chairman Ernie Martin last week urged the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board to stop the rail line halfway, at Middle Street, until the city could figure out how to pay for the profoundly over-budget project.
So what do they say to the many Honolulu businesses, some established before statehood, clustered around Ala Moana, being forced to move or having already left?
They just want to be selling slippers, wood and pool supplies. But, now they are all victims of a train that might never come.
Jim Frierson, owner of Island Pool and Spa Supply, used to have a warehouse and lot on Kona Street, just where the rail-line plans call for the train to make a hard right and turn up toward the shopping center.
Frierson had to sell to the city. He said the price was fair, but it was Frierson, not the city or HART, that would tell the employees they were maybe moving or maybe just leaving.
The business was relocated, but it was painful.
“Relocation of a business in urban Honolulu is a major hardship, and especially stressful due to the extremely limited availability of suitable locations for sale or lease,” Frierson said in an email interview.
Island Pool and Spa Supply, a wholesale distributor, had been in Kakaako for 35 years, owning the Kona Street land since 2003. It took six months to find a new warehouse in Mapunapuna and, Frierson said, the move was tough.
Down Kona Street is Steve Scott’s Scott Hawaii, which started in 1932 making plantation boots for sugarcane and pineapple field workers; now its Scott slippers are a well-known local brand. The city doesn’t want all of Scott’s property, just 7 feet of setback along one side.
After months of negotiation, he and the city came to agreement, only to find out now that everything has stopped.
“When the mayor came out initially and said stop at Middle Street, we said ‘Good, they won’t be coming here,’ but then Caldwell said he still wants to finish the project. We don’t know if he is stopping or not,” Scott said in an interview.
“Living under the threat of a full taking makes it difficult to make plans,” said Scott, who said the family business moved to Kona Street in 1955, before statehood and before Ala Moana Center was built.
Across Kona Street, Honolulu Hardwoods is also in the path of the maybe train. The certainty is that the city wants the property, but the two sides are far apart and the fight has become rough enough that the owners have been told by their attorney not to talk to the media about the fight.
Caldwell and company can’t keep quiet. The businesses along Kona Street and the others by the airport and along Dillingham all need to be told why, whether or not we build rail, they still must move.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
