Editorial
Kaka'ako med school deserves second look

Credit the new University of Hawai'i president, Evan Dobelle, with a healthy sense of prudence in taking a second look at the choice of Kaka'ako Makai as the location for a new medical school campus.

Our own doubts about this choice have to do with whether it would be the highest and best use for a portion of what is the state's last chunk of extremely valuable waterfront urban land — our crown jewel, if you will. It is imperative that the state avoid frittering this land away incrementally on unrelated developments. As we've often said, it must be the site of a signature landmark.

In other words, we're excited about the possibilities for a new med school, but perhaps not in Kaka'ako.

Dobelle's doubts are different. It's not his job to worry about the best use for the site. What he wonders is whether it's the best place available for the medical school. To begin with, is there sufficient room to build both the med school campus and the envisioned related biotech companies clustered around it?

Our guess is that if there's not enough room, it might be a boon for Kaka'ako, spurring a biotech expansion farther mauka. But Dobelle's concern about room for development of a "critical mass" is understandable.

When you mention the word "room," of course, we think of the wide-open spaces out Kapolei way. Near St. Francis Medical Center-West, for instance.

One of the attractions of the Kaka'ako site for the medical school dean, Dr. Edwin Cadman, no doubt is the prospect of attracting top-notch researchers and medical workers to amenable close-in offices with an ocean view. But we can imagine a Central O'ahu campus, landscaped with waterfalls, surrounded by a golf course and shaded by monkeypod trees that might work just as well.

Another reason Dobelle might question the Kaka'ako site is legislative commitment. Gov. Ben Cayetano, a big admirer of Cadman and solid backer of the Kaka'ako project, asked the Legislature for $141 million to get it started. Lawmakers responded with a paltry $13 million, which barely keeps the idea.

Cadman is impressive in his assurances of substantial private money that would come to the project, but it won't fly without that public money. Dobelle must ask whether lawmakers would be more enthusiastic about a different site.

We need a new medical school, and we need a signature development at Kaka'ako. Are these unrelated problems, or different facets of the same one? We welcome Dobelle to the brain trust wrestling with that one.