Kaimuki due for face-lift

By Scott Ishikawa and Suzanne Roig
Advertiser Staff Writers

Change is coming this summer to the Kaimuki business district along a portion of Wai'alae Avenue, and opinion is divided on whether it will help or hurt area merchants.

This stretch of stores along Wai'alae Avenue between 11th and 12th avenues will be affected by "traffic calming" measures that will ideally improve business in the area. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

While traffic calming has been used elsewhere to improve motorist and pedestrian safety, the Kaimuki business district will be the first to use the features in an effort to improve business.

Some community leaders are hoping the plan will revive the business district, which has been dormant since the late 1960s. That's when motorists began using the expanded H-1 Freeway, bypassing Kaimuki to access larger shopping centers such as Ala Moana and Kahala Mall.

The objective of the project is to bring back the look of old Kaimuki, while making it more pedestrian-friendly. The city plans shorter crosswalks, improved landscaping and wider sidewalks, so businesses can put awnings on storefronts, and tables along the sidewalks.

Some merchants are skeptical and say they would prefer the city provide more free parking. That would do more to enhance their business, they say, compared with six months of construction tie-ups that some fear could force them out of business.

Merchants say they have expressed their concerns to the city and the neighborhood board but feel their comments have fallen on deaf ears.

"People don't care if it's spruced up," said Maizie Tsuda, manager of the Tree People, a tree-cutting company. "They don't care about the way it looks, they're concerned about parking."

"We need a loading zone and street parking for our customers, especially at the restaurants," Tsuda said. "Most of the businesses have take-out. Customers need a place to park for a few minutes and they're taking it away. It's ridiculous."

Kaimuki Neighborhood Board member Leonard Tam said merchants' ideas were taken into consideration.

At one time he put up cones in front of Payless Shoe Store on Wai'alae Avenue to show what it would be like without the six lanes on the street.

"The board was behind the proposal and it wants to revitalize the business district because we have a lot of storefront and office vacancies," Tam said. "We were hoping this will draw more business and more people so the businesses can prosper."

But Tam admits there's a silent opposition. Some business owners, such as Rene Shiroma of Kaimuki Produce, are so tired of talking that they have walked out on the meetings.

"We didn't have any say in this," Shiroma said. "We don't need wider sidewalks. It won't make more people come here. My business is really going to be affected by this."

Liz Schwartz, owner of Coffee Talk, favors the improvements, but worries that six months of construction will keep customers from having easy access to her shop.

Schwartz and other merchants say the $7 million to $8 million for the project could be better used to pay for more parking lots, or to remove the meters in the two municipal lots around the area.

"A lot of my business is carry-out," said Schwartz, whose shop is on the corner of 12th and Wai'alae. "Parking is crucial. No one wants to buy a $1 cup of coffee and get a $25 parking ticket for an expired parking meter."

City Councilman Duke Bainum, who represents the area, said the improvements are part of a long-term plan that includes adding more stalls in the municipal parking lot off 12th Avenue.

But Gordon Tam, owner of Tam's Shoe Repair Shop, recalled that years ago, Wai'alae Avenue was much narrower. It was eventually widened in response to the highway bypassing the community.

Then as now, the move was to make the area more attractive to customers, said Tam, a second-generation shoe repair owner.

Today, the city is trying to make Wai'alae Avenue a Main Street, like on the Mainland, Tam said.

"Now they want to do the opposite, go back to olden days," he said.

Bringing back the past

Alan Fujimori, the architect hired to design Kaimuki, remembers when the community was considered "the downtown of East O'ahu."

"Ala Moana and downtown Honolulu was too far to travel by bike as a kid," said Fujimori, who grew up in 'üina Haina during the late 1950s and early 1960s. "My friends and I would meet in Kaimuki and eat a burger, see a movie, buy a soda and candy. Kaimuki was it for us."

Kaimuki was also the end of a Honolulu trolley and electric streetcar route during the first half of the 20th century.

Then the H-1 Freeway cut a swath through East Honolulu during the late 1960s, allowing drivers to bypass many of Kaimuki's mom-and-pop businesses.

Two years ago, Bainum and other city officials were touring the residential neighborhoods of Kaimuki in connection with a traffic-calming project when he decided to make a detour.

"I thought since we were already in the area, we'd bring the traffic engineers down to the business district," Bainum said. "Walking block by block, we started getting all of these ideas on how to improve the area."

"There's been a critical mass of ethnic restaurants and coffee shops that have kept Kaimuki going," Bainum said. "But we see a day when there are art and book shops; a place where tourists want to shop after they're done with their regular tours."

More pedestrian-friendly

The six-month, $1.9 million first phase of the project calls for burying overhead utility lines (except for electrical wires). Sidewalks will be widened from 8.5 feet to 10 feet on each side of the street to allow businesses to place awnings on their storefronts.

City officials say pedestrian safety would be improved with the changes. Sidewalks at the corners of three intersections along Wai'alae Avenue will be slightly extended into the street. Engineers believe it will improve visibility for pedestrians and motorists, and shorten the distance pedestrians need to cross the street.

"Adding landscaping and the (sidewalk extensions) will make the street appear narrower, forcing drivers to travel slower through the area," said city transportation director Cheryl Soon.

The plans would keep the same number of parallel parking stalls (13) and loading zones (three) along the stretch of Wai'alae, Fujimori said. It would also complement a city trolley service running from Waikiki to Kaimuki, Palolo and Kapahulu.

The second phase of the plan calls for restriping the 12th Avenue municipal parking lot to increase the number of spaces by 20 to 25 stalls.

The third phase would build a bus depot at the intersection of Wai'alae and Koko Head avenues near Lili'uokalani Elementary School. The school parking lot could become a site for a weekend farmers' market and other community events, Bainum said.

"This is not something that will be accomplished overnight, and I understand that," Bainum said. "But I feel we're doing something that would make Kaimuki a gathering place again."