When Michele Nekota was earning her master’s in business administration from the University of Phoenix, she probably never envisioned a career in parks administration, neither in Salt Lake City nor back here in the city of her birth. But in a way, said Honolulu’s new Department of Parks and Recreation director, it makes some sense.
“We run Parks and Rec like a business,” said Nekota, 55. “You have to balance, you have to do the budget, you have to try to provide as quality of service as you can.”
“If you look at other parks around the country, they do rest their fields. But we don’t rest it because we’re using it, yearround. And it’s hard. People will be upset at us if we close them down.”
— Michele Nekota
Director, Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation
Nekota’s undergraduate degree came from Brigham Young University, and she remained in Utah, where she was parks and recreation division director for Salt Lake County. Salt Lake City, with its 1.1 million people, has a little more than 100 parks — about a third of what Honolulu has.
This is likely the principal factor behind the city’s deferred maintenance problems in its 298 parks, Nekota said.
“I think we’re probably one of the largest, and that’s the reason why we’re at that point, too, because we have so many parks,” she said.
Nekota, who is single, graduated from Kalani High School. She played professional volleyball during her college years and still tries to keep up her athleticism, although her current passion is pickleball, the most recent sports craze to hit Honolulu.
But work really does absorb most of her time now, especially with the mayor’s big emphasis on refurbishing 24 park comfort stations and 16 playground installations. That will cost a total of $2 million.
The Ala Moana improvements planning process, by far the most contentious issue, has the top spot on the jobs list. The master plan and environmental impact statement will run about $1.2 million more, and there’s a lot more discussion in store.
“Everybody’s so passionate about it, because they’ve been to the park, whether it’s a party or picnic or family gathering or learning to surf or learning to swim out there,” she said. “All of us have memories of Ala Moana Park and Magic Island.”
QUESTION: What’s been the process in determining the future of Ala Moana Park?
ANSWER: The process is really to get input and feedback from the residents and the community. Really, that’s important for us — to get input from everyone, and to listen to it. …
We actually heard that they really love their park, Ala Moana Park, and they would like to see things that are already there, like the comfort stations being refurbished and looking better and smelling better.
After 30, 40 years — or 50 years, even, the irrigation system is 50 years old — things gets old and things need to be replaced.
Q: There’s some patchy lawn there, right?
A: Right, right. So I have staff working on it right now. … What we heard from them is we want to make sure that our grass is green, so our irrigation system is working.
We want to make sure our bathrooms, our comfort stations, are clean and nice. So we figured out a way to refurbish them. And that would be faster, because people don’t want to do without their most popular comfort station, on Magic Island. So we wanted to make sure we refurbished it, and made it semi-new again.
Q: When you say faster, faster than what?
A: Than a new one.
Q: The message about commercialization, do you think it was fairly plain that they wanted some respite from commercial activities?
A: It seemed like they wanted it to be basically the same, Ala Moana Beach Park. They don’t want too many changes. …
We hope to get that big great lawn refurbished and green again.
Q: Are you talking about Magic Island?
A: No, between McCoy Pavilion and the picnic area — that big area where people play …
Q: There was something about a playground, too, in the plan?
A: Yes, but we haven’t really gotten a lot of feedback from the public yet. So we are still working on getting that feedback. So you can actually go online … and say, OK, we want a certain type of playground, and what location do we want to have it in?
Q: What was the proposal about the blue pathways?
A: The pathways now are heavily used; people just love it, the jogging path. And when you look across the country, other parks, they have it paved, color-coated, or whatever. And so we just talked about like a blue pavement. You can do it green, you can do it yellow … it just brightens the park up. Across the nation,that’s the latest trend, to color the concrete.
Q: Is the city under pressure with the commercialization aspect, to monetize the park to offset costs?
A: No, I don’t think so; I don’t think that’s our direction. The bottom line is to make our public, our residents, happy and satisfied with the park as much as possible. Of course, you can’t please everyone.
Overall, I don’t think we’re looking right now directly at commercialization. I mean, we do have L&L Drive-In in there, and I think it’s working well. It seems to be a good solution for those who don’t want to bring their picnics. …
Q: What is the next step and timetable for the improvement plan?
A: They’re putting things out to bid, like the pathway; that’s one of the things we’re working on.
And then the (Magic Island) comfort station that we’re going to refurbish. Of course, we could refurbish it now, but we chose not to, because it’s the busiest time of the year, and it is the busiest comfort station in the park.
So we’re going to wait for a non-peak time. So the next non-peak time would be during the holidays, during November and December. So we’ll have that done probably close to the end of the year, the beginning of next year.
Q: But the plan is to refurbish all of them eventually, over time?
A: Over time, of course. It is like that for any park. We hope that our deferred maintenance, that we would have a plan to maintain all our existing facilities. Because that’s what we need to do first: take care of our facilities.
Q: And what about the irrigation system?
A: That will take a lot of money, to complete a new system. What we are looking at right now is looking at the great lawn, and trying to get our staff, in-house, at least to do some repairs on the irrigation system. Otherwise, we don’t have staffing to stay there and water 119 acres of grass. I mean, that’s a lot.
Q: Is it just the traffic across the lawn that wears it down?
A: It is. It’s a combination of traffic, the wear and tear of it … and then it’s also the the old type of irrigation system we have.
Q: But we’re just talking about repairs?
A: Repairs in the great lawn. But in the long process, the long solution, we hope to replace the entire system. But it’s going to take some years to do that. …
Q: What else is on the to-do list?
A: We are looking at refurbishment of comfort stations, just generally, throughout the island.
Q: For example?
A: For example, we had Kualoa. You can look at Asing Park … and you can look at Kamamalu, Kawananakoa, Kaneohe District Park.…
You should look at Kualoa Regional Park. The staff did an incredible job. There are before and after pictures of most of them (at honolulu.gov/parks).…
Q: Why are the public bathrooms trashed so often? Year-round use? Outdated design? Too little regular maintenance?
A: I would say there’s a combination of all those. But I would say probably that we have a lot of old facilities. …We put like a sealant on them, so that if we do have vandalism or graffiti, it’s easier to wipe it off.
I would say vandalism and graffiti in a lot of the areas are just an issue. And so we’re hoping the public will take a little pride in ownership into the facilities, so they can be our eyes, as well as the staff can be, helping to monitor.
Q: Are you planning partnerships?
A: We are. We are talking about different partnerships at different parks. Like for instance, the Kawananakoa Park, we have the men’s softball league that plays there. And they’re actually adopting the park, and they help to do cleanups on a regular basis. …
Q: What do you think of the concept of restricting use of parks to help with management, like what’s proposed on Kauai at Haena Park?
A: That would be the ideal situation (for a park) .… but it’s so heavily used that you kind of have to balance it. It would be nice to be able to rotate your fields.
Like at Waipio, where you have 20 fields, it would be nice to kind of rest the fields … for weeks at a time. But we are not able to do that because of the demand. …
And then you have Hanauma Bay, of course, but we rest it on Tuesdays, and that sure helps a lot, to get it all cleaned up and detailed.
But if you look at other parks around the country, they do rest their fields. But we don’t rest it because we’re using it, year-round. And it’s hard. People will be upset at us if we close them down.
We do have one field at Waialae Iki Park that we do close down for a couple months in the summertime, because they have that season where they have a break. So they’ve made it a point to do that. And that park looks really good after we rest it.
Q: What about some of the special recreation issues, like the archery range at Kapiolani Park? Any prospects for that?
A: We’re looking at options. I’m actually going to meet with a group, hopefully in the next week or two, and see if they’ve got some ideas or options.
Q: Do you think Honolulu offers the range of recreation activities people want?
A: We’re in the process of doing a needs-assessment study. … We’re going to do it islandwide, we’re going to do random surveys. We’re going to ask them about what type of programming, the amenities, they’d like to see in parks, and how they feel about their parks. …
And then from there we’ll put together a strategic action plan, for the staff and the public to see what our vision is.
