Return to A'ala Park complete
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer
It seemed like any other balmy day in the park, with everyday folks enjoying music, ball games, and food.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
Except this was A'ala Park — long known as a haven for the homeless and down-and-outers, some of them unsavory. No one could even recall the last time a sanctioned ball game had been played at the biggest and oldest park in downtown Honolulu.
Councilman John Yoshimura, left, Mayor Jeremy Harris (in hat) and Managing Director Ben Lee (in plaid shirt) untie the maile lei at the official reopening of A'ala Park.
"I think the ball games ended after World War II," said Bernard Apo, a Waipahu truck driver. He was there with his fiancée, Kelani Lessary, to watch a girls softball game, Na Kolohe versus Kalaeloa, at the new baseball diamond.
Apo's mom, Hattie, had played ball at the park in the 1940s, he said. Now he was watching his daughter, Elsa, 13, on the same turf.
"Gives me chicken skin," he said. "This place has been through so many ruins. And to sit here and watch your daughter play ball and see children running around having fun — this is something we thought had disappeared in downtown Honolulu."
The occasion was the official reopening of the park after a $2.3 million renovation that spiffed up the 4-acre grounds and added basketball courts, a modernized skateboard rink, playground equipment and drinking fountains in addition to ball fields.
Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris was there for the blessing, along with enough city workers to feed free chili and rice to more than 750 visitors, many of whom had not set foot on the grounds in years.
"We have reclaimed the park," said Bernie Young, who chairs the Kalihi Palama Neighborhood Board and helped launch the drive to return the park to the public three years ago. "The most wonderful thing is seeing the children playing here again. And as soon as they see that it's safe now, the elderly citizens will be back again, too."
"This park has been through a total transformation," said Honolulu Managing Director Ben Lee. "Old walkways and buildings beyond repair, old uneven courts and lighting that did not work were all demolished and replaced with ... new grass areas, new trees and landscaping."
Photo courtesy of MacKinnon Simpson
The park, one of the oldest in Hawai'i, dates back to May 1871, when it was deeded to the Hawai'i minister of the interior "for the use and benefit of the Hawaiian government." The park's first beautification program was announced in 1900, when it was decided the park should be converted from "a barren waste composed of harbor dredgings into a resort of beauty."
A century-old postcard from "Streetcar Days in Honolulu" shows a ball game at A'ala Park. In the century since, the triangular park has cycled from beautification to neglect.
Half a century later, most of what is known as the A'ala Triangle consisted of slum housing, dance halls, pool rooms and a spectacular dilapidated three-story building that housed the A'ala Pawn Shop, at the point of North King and Beretania streets. The A'ala playground, at the River Street end, had long since been overtaken by derelicts.
Then, in the late 1960s, every structure in the triangle was razed and the entire 4-acre wedge transformed into a landscaped "gateway to Honolulu."
By the 1980s, the homeless had returned, along with a growing number of drug dealers, prostitutes and what Honolulu City Council member John Yoshimura referred to yesterday as other "unsavory elements."
Those elements are no longer welcome at the park, Yoshimura said. The homeless are welcome, he said, along with all other responsible members of the community.
Several people who protested yesterday on behalf of the homeless were not convinced.
While hundreds lined up for free chili, Sharon Black and Jennifer Stowell were among a small contingent handing out free hamburgers to the homeless.
"I have no problem with the renovation at all," said Black. "But people need to understand that not all homeless people are bad or are druggies or alcoholics. And for the city to say we cannot feed the homeless here without a permit, and then have an event like this for political purposes where they are giving away free chili to anyone, that's inappropriate."
For most at the park, though, the focus was on less weighty subjects.
"It's a great park," said Sterlene Palmerton, coach of Kalaeloa, the girls softball team from Kapolei, who won the game 9-2. "Everybody is having a good time."
Reach Will Hoover at 525-8038 or at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.
