Barring swift city and state action, closing the Fort Street Mall Walmart guarantees that downtown Honolulu will become a slum (“Closure of last big downtown retailer, Walmart, prompts fears,” Star-Advertiser, March 22).
A successful urban core needs social and economic activity during and after the work day, and Honolulu’s hoped-for solution of converting office buildings to housing, presently hampered by perceptions of crime and squalor, simply will not work without a nearby retail base.
Programs to save Downtown would involve big increases in policing and social services, tax breaks and expedited permitting for needed business startups, and renewed urban beautification efforts. Nothing new needs to be invented. All that is required is political will.
We spend billions on rail, and ponder hundreds of millions for a retail and stadium complex in Halawa, but what Hawaii most needs now is a dynamic and comprehensive move to revitalize Downtown Honolulu. Otherwise, Fort Street becomes a permanent Skid Row in about a year.
Dan Binkley
Makiki
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