Honolulu residents rallying for a change of scenery

• Wish list: Neighborhood groups envision changes

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser staff writer

Highways without landscaping. Unkempt open lots. Half-empty buildings that favor parking more than people. An increase in overhead utility lines. Neighborhood centers that lack identity. A proliferation of concrete block walls.

City & County of Honolulu

Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

At top is an artist's rendering of what Kailua Road will look like. Above is a view of the current Kailua Road, looking toward Kaneohe.*At top is an artist's rendering of Kailua Road looking toward Enchanted Lake, with Liberty House on the right and a shopping center with Times Super Market on the left. Kailua Road, above, as it is now.

And increasingly, residents are demanding improvements in the way their neighborhoods look, using $38 million a year in city money to make the space around them a little bit more palatable.

Waikiki residents want wider sidewalks and more trees. Kailua and Salt Lake residents want their utility lines put underground. Mo'ili'ili, Liliha and Kaimuki residents are developing master plans to preserve and enhance the historic nature of their neighborhoods. Kapolei residents are asking for more trees. 'Aiea wants a green "gateway" that would serve as a welcome mat to the community.

Chinatown residents want better lighting and protective barriers around the neighborhood statues. Some Windward residents want their own distinctive bus stops. East Honolulu residents even are asking for $10,000 to design Hawaiian-style stencils to put on their drab, gray garbage pails.

"There seems to be a growing community awareness that the design of something is just as important as the construction," said city spokeswoman Carol Costa.

"People call every day about these things," said Mary Steiner, executive director of The Outdoor Circle, a watchdog organization that has been trying to protect the natural beauty of Honolulu for decades. "They call to complain and wonder what they can do to help."

"Honolulu is much like rest of country," said Harrison Rue, director of the Citizen Planning Institute here. "For 50 years or so, the emphasis on providing for the automobile has come at the expense of neighborhoods. Now, we're starting to see a change. People are waking up to the importance of good neighborhood planning and design."

Rue, who works with the city on planning projects, sees an increasing number of Honolulu residents demanding that city and private projects be functional and pleasing.

Residents voice concerns

The city's Community Visioning process, started three years ago by Mayor Jeremy Harris, has provided one way to do that. The visioning teams, made up of an unlimited number of volunteers freed from normal government controls, allow residents a direct voice in spending up to $38 million a year in government money.

City & County of Honolulu

Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

At top is an artist's rendering of Kailua Road looking toward Enchanted Lake, with Liberty House on the right and a shopping center with Times Super Market on the left. Kailua Road, above, as it is now.

"We made a lot of mistakes in the past," said City Managing Director Ben Lee. "Too many commercial strip areas; a lot of inappropriate use of lands next to the shoreline, but we've got an opportunity to fix some of that now. We can do a much better job than we have in the past."

Lee, an architect, and Rue said one key to better designed neighborhoods is creating more pedestrian friendly streets. Whether it's South Street in urban Honolulu or Kamehameha Highway in the Pearl City area or the downtown Kailua business district, people are intuitively worried about the effects of street fronts that cater to the auto, they said.

Rue said developers can help by creating a better mix of residential, commercial and other uses in their small-scale developments in the urban areas scattered around O'ahu. A good first step for many projects would be to put parking behind the building, a move which almost always creates more pedestrian traffic in a neighborhood, he said.

In Liliha, for instance, the visioning team set aside $350,000 of its 2002 allotment for a master plan to protect the historic mix of residences and small businesses, which have been chased from most other neighborhoods by the success of small strip malls.

New zoning rules sought

To prevent the loss of its pedestrian-friendly streets, the Liliha design team wants new zoning rules to allow reuse of older commercial buildings, improvements in the right of way with a mixture of street trees, signs and lighting fixtures, all of which encourage old-fashioned, personal contact between consumers and shopkeepers.

Lee said the government can only help so much. The rest needs to be done by private developers and professional designers working together.

"We've got to do a better job of raising the design consciousness in the private sector, too," he said.

Hawai'i's architects are starting to respond to the challenge, according to Matt Gilbertson, an architect who leads a list of design professionals actively involved in the Community Vision process. Each neighborhood team was assigned at least one professional architect or planner, working as volunteers, to help the group realize its vision, he said.

"There's a growing sense among architects that we need to do more community service, to help raise awareness about what constitutes good design," Gilbertson said.

Despite the increasing attention to design issues, most community requests still revolve around construction. Waipahu wants to spend nearly all next year's allotment to build a road that would shorten commuting time.

Windward O'ahu communities want most of their money spent on park improvements and flood control. In all, more than $27 million out of an available $38 million to the community teams will be spent on construction projects in 2002, city reports show.

Board rejects plan

And not everyone is always happy with the aesthetic choices made by visioning teams. In Kailua, for instance, the Neighborhood Board has twice voted against a plan to underground utility lines and to create a landscaped medium strip on Kailua Road. Opponents say the town has more pressing needs and the work will eliminate street-front parking in the town.

David Kaahaaina, who heads the Urban Design Committee for the American Institute of Architects Honolulu Chapter, said architects have to do a better job of incorporating pleasing designs into such construction projects.

"The idea that there's a Hawaiian sense of place didn't start over night," he said. "It takes a long time to refoster and rethink how we really want the community to look. It happens little by little. I'm not sure it's possible to reach a total consensus on what constitutes good design."

As a starting point, many design professionals agree that the Hawaiian sense of place includes buildings that take advantage of the island's natural beauty: lush greenery, natural ventilation and combined indoor-outdoor living spaces.

Kaahaaina said architects who try to put these features into their buildings are sometimes thwarted by government rules as well as economic restrictions imposed by their clients.

"Sometimes the idea is there, but the follow through isn't quite good enough," he said. "We're trying to be more out front so that people at the highest levels think about these things before they start a new project."

The most important thing designers can do is direct building priorities away from the automobile, Rue said. Rather than putting a huge parking lot in front of a new store, architects need to encourage the use of sidewalks by putting parking out of sight. He also suggests building more mixed use developments —those that combine residential and commercial space — in small available parcels in urban O'ahu centers instead of adding more of the ubiquitous two-story commercial strip malls.

"There's still a battle between the designers and the engineers sometimes," Lee said. "One goal is to find the right balance between the two."