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Let's save parks for trees, not for parking spaces
By Heidi Bornhorst
Green, open, tree-filled spaces are a sure sign of good city planning. Cities with trees and parks are appealing, inviting and restful to tourists and those who live there.
Advertiser library photo • May 2000
People with wealth and foresight sometimes give parks, botanical gardens or other green, open spaces to future generations in perpetuity. Foster Botanical Garden became "ours" thanks to the generosity and foresight of Mary Mikihala Foster.
Irwin Park, in front of Aloha Tower Marketplace, was first landscaped during the Honolulu waterfront improvement project of 1916-1933.
We also have a park that is perhaps less well-known from Helene Irwin Fagan.
You've probably been to Irwin Park, either as a keiki in the old days when it was more of a park, or recently, now that this tree-filled, well-planned, generously donated space is a parking lot fronting Aloha Tower Marketplace.
I was there recently, and was reminded that officials have deemed this a "temporary" parking lot. Thank goodness I have a small car because it's difficult to maneuver in the tight, ill-planned spaces.
Irwin Park is on Nimitz Highway. It is the first park-like, open space that greets you or any visitor to the Islands on the drive diamondhead into downtown and on to Waikiki. It has large old monkeypods, coconut groves and gracious banyans.
It was hailed in newspapers of the day as a beautiful landscaped gateway to Honolulu for world travelers. The park was the crowning element of the first Honolulu waterfront improvement project, from 1916 to 1933. It was planned as a landscaped companion entrance way to what once was Hawai'i's prime visitor greeting landmark and tallest building: Aloha Tower.
Now, akamai business people do not put a parking garage where it will block their shops and restaurants, but that is what the Aloha Tower Development Corp. wants to do. They are even going to court to try and do it — replace a park, given to all of us in perpetuity, with a parking lot.
We need to know about and cherish places like Irwin Park. When someone bequeaths land for a park in perpetuity, it should not be changed by developers. No one will want to donate land anymore.
Irwin Park was designed by the wife-and-husband team of Thompson and Thompson. They designed many wonderful landscapes, including Thomas Square and the grounds of Washington Place. Irwin park was one of their green jewels of design, way back in the 1930s. Some people say there is no proof of this historic, well-conceived design. Unfortunately, the Thompson landscape design office was in the tsunami zone. It and all its landscape plans and designs were washed away in a 1941 wave.
Irwin Park is protected by covenant, executive order, state law and the state register of historic places, but apparently that is not enough to preserve it.
We need to convince our legislators that parks are important. Irwin park should be perpetuated as a park — full of historic shady groves of trees, a quiet and green gathering space for all of us and our future generations.
