UH neighbors react to idea of 'college town'

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

From the freshly painted pink Atherton YMCA above the freeway to the flower and shave-ice shops on corners of King Street to the historic Mo'ili'ili Community Center, the neighborhood around the University of Hawai'i in Manoa is abuzz with talk of being a "college town."

Atherton YMCA, across from the UH-Manoa campus, has a fresh coat of paint, and a coffee shop just opened. A pizza place will open soon. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

The idea raises concern in some quarters, but in others there is anticipation the university will bring new vibrancy to a sleepy neighborhood rich in ethnic tradition.

At Puck's Alley, owner Darryl Wong wonders how merchants can be part of it. At The Haunt cafe, storyteller Glen Grant is worried that the unique shops that give the community its flavor will not survive. At the Mo'ili'ili Community Center — a focal point of social and cultural enrichment for generations of families — executive director Rebecca Ryan worries about how residents will be protected.

"While we're interested in the UH/town aspect, Mo'ili'ili also has a history of its own which is very old, so we don't exactly just see us being absorbed," Ryan said.

"There's a sense of place here," said Grant, who leads historic tours of the neighborhood and is the keeper of its myths and legends. "And Honolulu needs this somewhere, rather than just going to the strip mall."

To focus their desires more clearly, the business community is moving to form its own group — Old Town Mo'ili'ili Business Association — under the leadership of Puck's Alley's Wong.

"For us to ignore the university as businesses, that wouldn't be the brightest thing ... because that's a source of your customers," Wong said. "They're trying to create a college community, and the only way to do that is create a place where the students and faculty can talk, work and play — and that's where we would come in.

"I'm trying to get people in the business community aware of what's happening and see if there's interest to work with the university to get something off the ground."

No land seizures, for now

A bill introduced by House Speaker Calvin Say to condemn Puck's Alley and University Square was killed at the request of the UH administration.

"It was a little early to exercise any of these powers," Morihara said.

And while UH can take land at any time, Dobelle said he would rather work with the community to build an environment that works for both, just as he did as president of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

In 1996, Dobelle proposed an even more far-reaching initiative in the neighborhood around Trinity aimed at rebuilding a ghetto. Stopping in at dozens of meetings in church basements and other gathering places, Dobelle oversaw a transformation that created a "learning corridor" in an area once dotted with abandoned buildings and crack houses.

"We're basically trying to understand, as a neighbor, what the community wants," he said. "And how to reach through that highway overpass with a design that could incorporate housing and residential opportunities for students and faculty, but also the community itself, making sure the people have a chance to live in a lively community that's an exciting place to be.

"We want to make their small business or their home have more value and more interest for them, and incorporate their aspirations and ours."

Dobelle talks about partnerships to realize any community's dreams — between community groups, educational institutions, financial institutions, private entities and government.

The Japanese Cultural Center is one willing partner. President Susan Kodani said the center already provides the university with banquet space for large meetings and works with different departments, such as oral history, to offer special programs at the center.

"We're always looking for strategic partnerships," Kodani said. "We have an underutilized facility, and there might be ways for the university to make more use of it."

Extended process

Dobelle said meetings with residents and merchants won't actually begin until after the strategic plan has come together in May. Then meetings will start in earnest to understand every detail of what the community needs — everything from zoning issues to traffic problems to parking.

At Trinity, that process took months, said Betsy Sloane, newly appointed president of the UH Foundation and a former Trinity fund-raiser involved in those efforts.

"On a block-by-block basis, they worked with a planner provided by the college and identified what needed to be done to improve each block," Sloane said. "If an abandoned home needed to be taken down because they needed more green space for the neighborhood — or so it wouldn't be a center for destructive activities — they would work to find special financing."

Dobelle is considering hiring a nationally known urban planner to look at how to make the college town "footprint" work, especially as it is cut in half by the H-1 Freeway.

"We need more involvement with master planners who can conceptualize what it would be like," he said.

'Great ideas'

Even before Dobelle's "college town" initiative, the YMCA was pumping $170,000 into renovations at its valuable historic property at the corner of University Avenue and Metcalf Street, including new carpets and beds, pink paint, an improved kitchen and a pizza parlor to open in another month.

Now it will begin looking at more ways to work with the university, and would even consider taking down the smaller YWCA building to accommodate something better.

"We think Dr. Dobelle's got really great ideas of what life ought to be like for university students," said Don Anderson, president of the YMCA on O'ahu. "He's on the right track of trying to create more of a campus feeling."

Anderson said the Y isn't interested in becoming just another university dorm, however.

"There would have to be some programmatic things to put us in the lives of young people in a meaningful way. We're happy with what we're doing — such as Frosh Camp, Youth Mapping (neighborhood improvement projects) and the Hawai'i Mentoring Initiative. But maybe there's better stuff we could be doing."

Reach Bev Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.