Kahekili landscape plan bashed
By Eloise Aguiar
Advertiser Windward O'ahu Writer
KANE'OHE — Six years after widening Kahekili Highway from two lanes to six, the state is moving ahead on a $2.5 million beautification. But the proposed work still falls short of what the community wants.
The state Department of Transportation expects to award a contract for the beautification project by May, with construction beginning in summer, said Henry Kennedy, the project manager.
The state will install two 600-foot planter boxes in the median, plant vines along the mauka wall, repaint the tile-block portion of the wall and create a stucco-like texture on the smooth concrete walls that were built as noise buffers. The smooth wall by the district park will remain the same.
The community had wanted more, including reducing the width of each lane by 1 foot to slow traffic and widen the sidewalk to accommodate more planters.
The state seemed to listen when it formed a citizens committee in 2001 to make suggestions for the project, but the final plan isn't much different from the first one brought to the community, said Philip Mowrey, who represented the Kane'ohe Neighborhood Board on the committee.
"I'm frustrated that we're not solving the problems and we're spending a lot of money for a half-hearted effort," said Mowrey.
When the state brought a plan before the community in 2001 most residents were happy that the state would finally improve the look of a concrete landscape built in the middle of lush Kane'ohe town.
Hopes were raised that the state could address other problems inherent to a free-way-type road, including speeding and running red lights.
The state never intended to do more than landscape the project and has said that the committee's ideas were costly and beyond the scope of the project, Kennedy said. The federal government will pay for 30 percent of the project.
"I can appreciate what he's saying, but this is a landscape project," Kennedy said, adding that the state doesn't have any future projects to address the speeding and traffic-light violation problems.
Some said the citizens committee was a waste of time, but Sam Moku, a Kane'ohe Neighborhood Board member, disagrees. The meetings gave residents an opportunity to vent their frustration over the way the community was treated in the original planning for the highway expansion, said Moku.
But in the end, the community was disappointed that most of its ideas were shot down, he said.
"In the end money was the biggest problem," Moku said.
Rom Duran, a Kane'ohe resident since 1959 and a member of the Kane'ohe Outdoor Circle, said he had given up on the project because it was a year behind schedule and figured the money had lapsed.
Residents had wanted trees on the edge of the highway; to replace concrete barriers with grass, berms with rock arrangements or flowering shrubs and canopy trees; and to get rid of unnecessary chainlink fences, he said.
"They're doing pretty much what the plan prepared by their consultants and brought to the community called for," Duran said, adding that he's still happy that something is being done.
"Any landscaping the state does will be an improvement, but it's far from what the committee recommended," he said.
Reach Eloise Aguiar at eaguiar@honoluluadvertiser.com. or 234-5266.
