Posted on: Tuesday, June 5, 2001

FAA move marks beginning of Diamond Head renovation

By Suzanne Roig
Advertiser East Honolulu Bureau

DIAMOND HEAD — The first visible step that the long-awaited restoration of Hawai'i's most famous landmark has begun is being taken with the removal of the Federal Aviation Administration building.

Since 1963, the center has been home to an operation inside Diamond Head State Monument that has guided Hawai'i-bound aircraft from 200 miles outside of the Islands to within 20 miles of their intended airports.

In recent years, the building housed about 100 employees. Now they have moved to the FAA's expanded facility on Hickam Air Force Base, and demolition of the building inside the crater is at hand.

"This is a step in the direction of fulfilling the master plan for Diamond Head," said Yara Lamadrid-Rose, Diamond Head park coordinator. "Every step that progresses us toward the master plan implementation is a positive."

The FAA will spend $1.7 million to demolish and restore the 3.1-acre site. Workers already have begun removing hazardous materials such as asbestos and lead paint. In about two weeks, the wrecking ball will be set up to smash the concrete walls, said David Washino, an FAA spokesman.

"The philosophy is to restore the crater and make it more natural," Washino said. "Our getting out of the crater is part of the state's plan to restore the crater to its natural state."

When the FAA built its facility in 1958, the United States was in the midst of the Cold War, and the building was build of precast concrete walls 15 to 18 inches thick.

By the late 1980s, the facility was deemed too small and in need of a technological upgrade. The community balked at the idea of expanding the center, so relocation planning began.

The air traffic controllers who had worked in the Diamond Head building now operate out of a state-of-the art facility on the border of the Honolulu International Airport and the Air Force base, Washino said.

While the FAA facility will soon be gone, the National Guard still has buildings inside the crater. The National Guard may not leave its facilities for five years, and even has an agreement that allows it to stay until 2029. But removal of the buildings is part of the preservation plan.

Proponents of the plan say it is necessary to keep pace with growing attendance at Diamond Head, which is up to about 1 million annually.

The plan calls for an interpretative center as well as a system of trails throughout the nearly 500 acres that make up the Diamond Head State Monument, taking hikers to other tunnels, large cannon stations, or batteries, fire control stations, and dryland and wetland ecosystems.