Park to be protest legacy

By Robbie Dingeman
Advertiser City Hall Writer

The creation of a park that preserves open space mauka of Sandy Beach will move into the planning stages later this year, bringing to an end a 15-year-plus battle to keep that stretch of East Honolulu coastline wild.

It was a fight that took community activism here to a rare level and ultimately blocked landowner Kamehameha Schools from building houses across the highway from the beach.

Now that 32-acre parcel will soon be the city's under a settlement approved last week by the City Council.

"It is outstanding as one of the few issues in modern times that really galvanized people," said Donna Wong, executive director of Hawai'i's Thousand Friends, a public-interest group that helped lead the effort to preserve the coastline.

Mayor Jeremy Harris last week said he will seek an undetermined amount of money in the city budget to begin park planning. Completion of the land deal will take some time, and construction typically takes about 18 months to begin after planning and engineering work is done, he said.

Harris said the city will shape the park according to what the community wants, so city officials must now go back to the Hawai'i Kai community, neighborhood boards, vision teams and others to sound them out.

"I would prefer to see more of a natural park," Harris said. "They might opt for ball fields and all the rest."

The settlement with Kamehameha Schools is valued at $60 million to $70 million. The city will pay a total of $5.4 million to developer Maunalua Associates and to landowner Kamehameha Schools, as well as proceeds from the sale from six city parcels in Pearl City. Kamehameha Schools will also receive smaller chunks of land around O'ahu, mostly parcels that are adjacent to its property.

While 32 acres on the Ka Iwi coast may not sound hugely significant, the area became a symbol for people who protested against attempts to build housing there in 1986. In April 1987, the City Council approved a permit to allow housing development, clearing the way for the city to approve a residential project there.

Save Sandy Beach

September 1987 marked the start of a citizens' petition drive, Save Sandy Beach, complete with an eye-catching wave logo used on bumper stickers, T-shirts and oft-waved protest signs. In 1988, O'ahu voters approved a ballot initiative to designate the land for preservation.

The Hawai'i Supreme Court invalidated the initiative, saying state law did not allow the use of initiative to decide land-use matters. But the City Council in 1989 followed the will of the voters and rezoned the land from residential to preservation.

Officials and attorneys on both sides of the issue last week praised the settlement as one that would benefit everyone and cost taxpayers much less than the

$100 million cash payment that many had feared it would take to compensate the developer and landowner for land value taken away by the rezoning.

Wong, of Hawai'i's Thousand Friends, said she felt that a handful of people devoted themselves to the preservation effort in a way that was compelling to the public and inspired others to protect "one of the few remaining undeveloped coastlines," a natural resource that she finds "just so spectacular."

This past May, the state worked out a $12.8 million settlement to buy from Kamehameha Schools and Kaiser Aluminum a nearby 305-acre stretch of open coastline between Makapu'u and Sandy beaches as part of the effort to block creeping urbanization.

But those last 32 acres remained a huge hurdle because years earlier the City Council had taken away the landowners' property rights by changing the zoning after the granting of permits.

New members on council

Councilman Steve Holmes credits the Sandy Beach issue with helping to put him in office in 1991. He said the Save Sandy Beach supporters worked hard to oust his predecessor, David Kahanu, who had voted in favor of allowing the area to be developed.

"The Sandy Beach coalition folks put a tremendous amount of effort in my campaign," Holmes said. He said the signature drive "clearly showed public sentiment in their direction, islandwide, not just in one area, not just East Honolulu."

Mayor Harris said the settlement and land swap are better than an earlier proposal that would have allowed development of some of the Ka Iwi area in exchange for preserving other areas.

Councilman John Henry Felix, who now represents the area, said the citizens' signature drive brought people together even if the initiative itself was thrown out by the high court. "It was clear to the general public that this treasured resource was in jeopardy."

Felix said the city did the right thing to take back the zoning to preserve the resource. "It's been an agonizingly long period of time, but I think it was worth the price, it was worth the effort."

He said there's a hopeful message to the community — that "you eventually prevail if you're doing the right thing."

Councilman Duke Bainum said his only regret last week was that the details of the settlement were not disclosed to the public until moments before the vote was taken by the council.

Bainum said the settlement is a good one that considers the importance of the issue. "I think it was an example of how much of a priority O'ahu residents put on our environment."

Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070.