A plan to turn Manoa Valley’s long-shuttered Paradise Park botanical and zoological garden into a new visitor attraction appears relinquished seven years after being announced.

The owner of the park, which closed in 1994, is trying to sell 76 acres that include the former attraction site for $20 million through a luxury home brokerage firm.

Possible uses for the property zoned by the city for preservation include farming, park/recreation and single-family residence, according to the listing from Akimi Mallin of Honolulu-based Luxury Homes International.

“Ideal for nature conservation and preservation,” the listing states. “This parcel is NOT available for large scale development.”

Darryl Wong, whose late father, James W.Y. Wong, opened Paradise Park in 1968, could not be reached for comment.

Darryl Wong was spearheading the redevelopment plan with help from his father, who died in 2017, through the family firm Paradise Park Inc.

In 2014 the company announced a $15 million plan to restore the park site featuring Native Hawaiian cultural displays, hula shows, a hula museum, nine gardens and a descriptive history of the valley with a replica summer home of Queen Kaahumanu.

“I can visualize everything,” Darryl Wong said then about the envisioned new attraction Paradise Park Presents the Hawaiian Cultural Center in Manoa Valley. “With the Hawaiian cultural theme, we expect to bring life back to this part of the valley that has been sitting idle for many years.”

The plan aimed to attract close to 400,000 tourists annually, up from the former park’s peak annual attendance of around 300,000.

To prepare for the conversion, Wong’s company in 2014 paid $4.1 million to acquire 152 acres that it originally leased from the Roman Catholic Church to start Paradise Park on 12 acres.

The company also had opened a gift shop and a hula practice studio in the old park’s main four-story building, which once featured a giant aviary, and planned to convert the building’s top-floor former Treetops Restaurant into a venue with a buffet, bar and stage for lunch and dinner hula shows.

The state Board of Land and Natural Resources, which granted Paradise Park’s original botanical and zoological garden permit for land in the state conservation district, approved a modified permit for the new park concept in 2014 over community objections primarily focused on traffic and noise concerns.

However, the plan was set back because construction did not begin by a deadline imposed by the board. After the permit lapsed in 2015, the property owner faced a new requirement to produce an environmental assessment before seeking a new board approval.

Paradise Park Inc. is now trying to sell 76 acres, which include the 12-acre park site and two parking lots on an adjacent parcel, that it bought from the church for $2.15 million in 2014. The other 76 acres were bought for $1.95 million and are not contiguous to the park site.

Since 1994 several ideas have been proposed to reuse the property, including creation of a city park, a spiritual retreat, a wedding chapel and a University of Hawaii conservation biology research center.

UH agreed to buy the property in 2002 and announced plans for an environmental research program expected to attract lucrative federal research grants. But a year later then-Gov. Linda Lingle refused to release $5.5 million approved by the Legislature to buy the land and renovate buildings after citing concerns about paying for future maintenance.