When Kailua rolls out the welcome mat for its annual street festival April 29, some 10,000 people will enjoy great food, activities and entertainment for a worthy cause. For 26 years, the “I Love Kailua” Town Party has raised funds for beautification efforts spearheaded by the Lani-Kailua Branch of the Outdoor Circle.

“‘I Love Kailua’ brings the community together for a full day of family fun that enables our group to continue planting trees, installing irrigation systems, creating landscape designs and maintaining the greenery at parks, traffic triangles and other public places throughout town,” said Diane Harding, Outdoor Circle branch president.

The event launched in 1993 to help the all-volunteer Outdoor Circle fund a major landscaping project at Alala Point at the entrance to Lanikai. It was dubbed “I Love Kailua” because it was held on Valentine’s Day. Then-owner Kaneohe Ranch Co. donated use of the parking lot beside what is now Whole Foods.

“In addition to food, crafts, entertainment and a small plant sale, there were clowns, acrobats and a petting zoo,” Harding said. “We had no idea how many people would come. It turned out to be 4,000, and we netted $35,000. We were ecstatic! As the years passed, the party kept getting bigger and better.”

In 2004 it moved to its current location on Kailua Road to accommodate the steadily growing crowds and offerings.

Participating this year will be 20 restaurants and 50 artists and artisans (most from Windward Oahu) along with several nonprofit community groups. Adventist Health Castle (formerly Castle Medical Center) will host a small health fair with a massage area and medical professionals who can answer questions about cardiovascular health, bariatric weight loss and more.

At Art in the Park, Windward Oahu artists will display and sell their work. Some will be creating new pieces on the spot. The children’s play area will be equipped with a ropes course, a climbing rock wall and a bounce house and other inflatables.

Have a green thumb? Be sure to browse in the Plant Tent, where orchids, gingers, heliconias and more will be available for sale. Nursery staff will help you select species that would grow best in your yard.

New this year is the Environmental Garden, where you can learn how to build a hydroponics system; why it’s important to preserve Kawainui Marsh, Hawaii’s largest remaining wetland; and what planting and pruning techniques are proper for various trees and shrubs.

“I’ve lived in Kailua for 37 years, and despite the changes it still has the charm and community spirit of a small town,” Harding said.

“Maybe that’s due in part to the insular nature of our topography; essentially, we’re surrounded by water on all sides. What’s especially great about ‘I Love Kailua’ is that it’s a fundraiser for our Outdoor Circle branch, meaning everyone who attends becomes a stakeholder in keeping Kailua clean, green and beautiful.”

—

ABOUT KAILUA

It’s easy to understand why early Hawaiians settled in the Windward Oahu district of Kailua: It was blessed with fertile lands, two natural ponds (Kaelepulu and Kawainui) and a plentiful source of food from pristine Kailua Bay.

Scientific evidence has found that humans first occupied the Kailua area as early as A.D. 500; however, it wasn’t until around 1200 that widespread cultivation took root here, with Hawaiians growing taro as well as bananas, sweet potato and other native crops in a vast network of terraced parcels that extended into the foothills and valleys of the Koolau Mountains.

By the mid-1800s Hawaii’s growing sugar industry brought Chinese immigrant workers to the islands. When the workers’ contracts expired, many moved to Kailua and took up rice farming and milling. At one time there were as many as five rice mills in the district.

Rice cultivation waned by 1910 as market demand declined. A change in immigration laws stopped the flow of Chinese laborers to Hawaii, and rice exports here faced competition from growers in Texas and California. Dairy farms began to replace Kailua’s rice farms and became more widespread as the population grew.

Also by the early 1900s, Kailua was seeing the first signs of commerce, including three Chinese-owned grocery stores in Maunawili, followed by a poi factory, blacksmith, barbershop, tailor shop and other small businesses. Traveling vendors, selling housewares and sundries as well as perishables, made frequent visits to the Windward side.

Around the same time, Kaneohe Ranch Co., founded in 1893 and later acquired by James B. Castle and his son Harold Kainalu Long Castle, was accumulating large tracts of land in Windward Oahu for ranching activities. Considered one of the founding families of “modern Kailua,” the Castles were the dominant landowners in the region, holding an estimated 80 percent of the property in Kailua by the time World War II broke out.

A businessman with a keen sense of community, Harold Castle pursued his vision for Kailua when the war ended in 1945. He saw it as a new Honolulu suburb that would help meet the postwar housing demand. Kaneohe Ranch ceased its cattle operations in 1942, and its lands were ripe for new homes and commercial development. It launched a major marketing campaign in the early 1950s to lure families to the Windward side.

Residential subdivisions blossomed on former ranch and farm lands; mom-and-pop stores and roadside fruit stands were replaced by commercial enterprises; and within a decade “sleepy” Kailua became Hawaii’s fastest-growing community.

In December 2013 Alexander & Baldwin, another kamaaina company with a long history of community building in Hawaii, purchased substantial land holdings from Kaneohe Ranch and the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation. A&B is committed to partnering with the community to maintain the long-term livability, desirability and beauty of Kailua town.

— Reprinted courtesy Alexander & Baldwin

Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi is a Honolulu-based freelance writer whose travel features for the Star-Advertiser have won several Society of American Travel Writers awards.