This week the state announced plans for the future of Kakaako Waterfront Park, which include fancy ideas like a sand volleyball court with bleachers, a gym, a place for food trucks and a beer garden.

First reaction:

Brah! No need $44.5 million and 20 years to make a beer garden in Kakaako Park. Just grab a cold pack and head on down! The boyz already started without you, but that’s OK as long as you share.

Second reaction:

What a cute example of positive thinking, estimating that it will take 20 years to clear out the homeless from that area. That might be a bit optimistic, but you people roll with it. Dream big.

Third reaction:

Try wait, yeah? Isn’t that whole thing built on a dump? And aren’t those rolling hills (the ones the kiddies used to slide down on makeshift cardboard sleds before the homeless situation got so scary) really just covered mounds of opala? Wow, you folks REALLY are going for “anything is possible,” yeah? Good for you!

The area has struggled for an identity in the years since it was turned into a park in 1992.

It was, for a time, the place to take wedding photos and shoot commercials featuring smiling children playing in the sun. A place for the school bus to park while the kids eat box lunches before heading back to the country. It was a spot for lunchtime romantic rendezvous where discrete office couples could share their dreams and stare out at the waves. And then it became ground zero for Honolulu’s urban homeless problem.

Part of the Kakaako park’s identity crisis is that, though it is waterfront, it is not beachfront. There’s no safe sandy lagoon for baby splashing and mellow floating. The ocean there is for a select group of bodysurfers who think the backbreaking waves at Point Panic are unreal.

But now, with Kakaako’s destiny in the hands of big developers building a skyline of luxury condos, the pressure is on to make the shoreline match the Photoshopped “artist’s rendition” of the view from those multimillion-dollar lanai. It sure isn’t much to gaze at right now.

It also says something about human nature, our insatiable need to be entertained and the unabashed desire to turn a profit on every square foot of beachfront Hawaii land that the vision of Kakaako is not just cleaning the place up and making it safe for family picnics. Not good enough. There have to be activities, like rope obstacle courses and rock climbing on man-made rocks. Just looking at the sunset, watching the surfers or climbing on real rocks doesn’t cut it anymore. There has to be an indoor gym, because exercising by walking near the water is somehow too passive.

People can’t just bring musubi from home. They have to be enticed to purchase stuff, including an adult beverage.

It’s like the ocean isn’t enough of an attraction without things to buy and tickets to purchase.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.