COMMENTARY
Kaka'ako aquarium clear winner
By Kirk Caldwell
Double your pleasure, double your fun. No, no, no, we want just one.
Advertiser library photo • 2003
The Honolulu Advertiser has recently questioned the wisdom of supporting two aquarium projects. However, both aquarium bills continue to move through the Legislature. I believe the Kaka'ako project is the better aquarium proposal.
An artist's rendering shows the proposed aquarium project in Kaka'ako. The 150,000-square-foot Ocean Center Aquarium would include the University of Hawai'i's Kewalo Marine Lab.
Kaka'ako
The Kaka'ako project is designed as a learning and research center. The Kaka'ako ocean environment learning center is for the community and visitors alike. There is no better place for such a project.
The complex would sit halfway between downtown Honolulu, our major urban center, and Waikiki, our major tourist destination. It would be an integral component of the long-held dream of an oceanfront park stretching from Sand Island to Diamond Head where residents and visitors alike could enjoy our incredible oceanfront environment.
The first of three components to this project is the world-class Ocean Center Aquarium, approximately 150,000 square feet in size.
An average of 340,000 people a year visit the small Waikiki Aquarium, which is owned and managed by the University of Hawai'i. Approximately 315,000 people visit Sea Life Park.
In a 1998 state-commissioned study for a Kaka'ako aquarium project, it was estimated that 775,000 people a year would visit the Kaka'ako aquarium, of which 600,000 would be tourists. There is obviously strong demand for an aquarium in the Kaka'ako area.
The second component is the University of Hawai'i's Pacific Biomedical Research Center's Kewalo Marine Lab, currently located in front of Point Panic. The Lab would be relocated to the new aquarium site, opening this area to promenade space and incredible south shore views.
This world-class laboratory in basic and applied marine research would complement, and be integrated with, the $300 million John A. Burns School of Medicine's biomedical complex being built in Kaka'ako.
The synergy between these two facilities and Hawai'i's burgeoning biomedical research community would be tremendous.
The third component comprises a private research institute and startup incubator facility. Modeled after the Whitehead Institute near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it also would enhance the biomedical research and marine science aspects of the project.
Most significantly, no general fund money would be spent on the project, to be paid for in part by $40 million in state revenue bonds, a traditional source of financing in which the debt is paid back over time from revenue generated by the project.
Ko Olina
The $75 million nonrefundable tax credit is designed to encourage resort development, including an outdoor aquarium.
The Ko Olina Resort, approximately 25 miles from Honolulu's urban core, was developed more than 10 years ago on the promise that it would become an alternative resort destination to Waikiki and a hope that it would tie into the Kapolei "second city" development plan and provide jobs for area residents.
The proposed $75 million tax credit is a further promise and hope.
Proponents of this project estimate that the tax credits will generate nearly $1 billion worth of construction, create 10,000 construction jobs and 2,000 permanent jobs. Similar projections made when the resort was first proposed never were fulfilled.
The proposed aquarium is just a small part of this overall project, which is envisioned to include hotels, time-share units, condominiums, townhouses, commercial and other facilities.
The main part of the aquarium would be outdoors, built around snorkeling lagoons. Visitors would swim amid coral and tropical fish separated by clear plastic walls from sharks, barracudas and other sea life within the aquarium. They also would be able to walk inside acrylic viewing tubes. In some ways, this is based on the concept of the Atlantis Resort in the Caribbean, where tourist in swimsuits drink mai tais and swim with fishes, safe from sharks cruising just a centimeter of plastic away.
In essence, the aquarium is a water feature wrapped around a resort development.
The $75 million worth of tax credits amounts to a subsidy to bail out a project that now needs state help to ensure its success. This is bad tax policy and bad public policy.
By granting a tax credit to a specific resort project, lawmakers would be saying this development is more important than providing direct tax relief to residents of the Leeward Coast or addressing the area's other pressing needs.
The Kaka'ako proposal is clearly the better aquarium project.
Kirk Caldwell is a state representative from Manoa.
Correction: A 150,000-square-foot Ocean Center Aquarium is proposed in Kaka'ako. The caption with an artist's rendering was unclear in a previous version of this article.
