Despite being told that a contentious playground is off the table for Ala Moana Regional Park, regular parkgoers continue to raise objections to a cluster of projects planned by Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration that need a key permit from the Honolulu City Council.
About 35 people attended a public hearing at McCoy Pavilion Wednesday sponsored by the Department of Planning and Permitting on the Ala Moana park special management area (SMA) use permit application Opens in a new tab which includes not just the playground but more than a half-dozen other improvement projects. About 20 people testified and all but one spoke against the city’s request.
Many of the testifiers reiterated their objections to the placing of an inclusive park on the Diamond Head end of the park just mauka of the L&L Hawaiian Barbecue concession. They said they generally support the announcement made last weekend by Pa‘ani Kakou, the group that has stated it will raise public money to develop and maintain the playground, to instead put the facility in Kakaako Gateway Park several miles away.
But they also continued to raise concerns about other aspects of the permit application, including plans for a dog park, replenishing sand along the beach and creating more parking at the expense of green space.
Parkgoer Brad Frye said he objects to the placing of a dog park on the Ewa end of the park. He said he worries that the proposed feature, which the permit application describes as being less than half an acre, “is so small it will not be a dog park but just a canine latrine.” The city should consider other locations in the area that the Ala Moana-Kakaako Neighborhood Board has identified as preferable places for a dog park, he said.
Frye said while he’s not against additional parking at Ala Moana, he objects to the proposed project that features more perpendicular stalls because “it needlessly destroys about two football fields worth of grass and trees and replaces it with very expensive and very ugly asphalt roads with concrete curbs and sidewalks.”
The plan easily could have added the same number of additional stalls under a more simple and efficient parking layout at Magic Island that doesn’t take as much green space, he said.
Bianca Isaki, a member of KAHEA: The Hawaiian Environmental Alliance, said her group is bothered by plans that would jeopardize cultural and recreational resources at the park.
Sand crabs, other invertebrates and nearshore fish that populate the area “would be destroyed by the dumping of 70,000 cubic yards of sand as part of that ill-advised sand replenishment project,” she said.
Additionally, the cumulative impact of all the projects would be increased traffic into the park which, by itself, could pose danger to Ala Moana’s cultural resources, Isaki said. Such impacts are not thoughtfully analyzed in either the environmental impact statement for the park master plan or the SMA permit application, she said.
Sharlene Chun-Lum, a member of the Save Ala Moana Park Hui, said the overall SMA permit request is vague and conflicts with what’s proposed in the final EIS that had been submitted for the Ala Moana Master Plan, creating confusion for those in the public trying to keep up with what’s planned.
What’s more, “there’s no association of each project with costs” laid out in the application, Chun-Lum said.
Permit opponents were told by project planners that, despite Pa‘ani Kakou’s announcement about relocating the playground to Kakaako, the original playground plan will stay in the permit application as submitted.
Samuel King, a parent, said he’s grateful for the passion people have shown for various aspects of the park plan but that he supported placement of the playground at Ala Moana.
King said he hopes the new plan for the Kakaako playground is successful and that he will be visiting it with his kids. Nonetheless, he said, “I think it’s a mistake, I think a playground at Ala Moana would have been awesome.”
He said he envisioned that after taking his son to the beach, they could go to a playground with a mini-zipline and splash pad. “That all sounds wonderful to me,” he said, adding that others with young children feel the same way. “
Opponents of locating the three-acre, inclusive playground at Ala Moana said it takes away too much green space from what was set up to be a passive park. They also questioned the lack of public input on the location and whether Pa‘ani Kakou, which is comprised largely of developers and/or residents of the ritzy Park Lane condominium across the street, was able to exert its influence on the administration’s siting because of its campaign contributions to the Caldwell administration and Council members.
Caldwell said the public should be thankful that the group has stepped forward and offered to raise private funds for a public facility.
Those opposed to the Ala Moana playground location joined Caldwell and area Council members at Pa‘ani Kakou’s news conference last weekend announcing it is now focusing on placing the playground in Kakaako Opens in a new tab.
Assuming supporters can raise the money, a playground at either Kakaako or Ala Moana still would need to win approval from the Council.
