New plan ordered for pagoda
By James Gonser
Advertiser Urban Honolulu Writer
The effort to save a Nu'uanu cemetery pagoda from the bulldozer has forced the owners of Honolulu Memorial Park to come up with a new plan that may save the historic structure.
• Owners: Want to spend $200,000 to demolish the pagoda rather than spend $1 million to repair it. • Stakeholders: Argue that repair would be as low as $600,000 • Time frame: A new Chapter 11 reorganization plan must be filed by March 21.
Pagoda niche holders, who have a stake in the cemetery's bankruptcy filing, gathered enough votes to reject the memorial park's plan, and a bankruptcy court judge yesterday allowed the owners to withdraw that plan and develop a new reorganization proposal.
Restore or demolish?
Stakeholders and owners of the Nu'uanu pagoda at Honolulu Memorial Park are at odds over whether to restore or demolish the failing structure:
The old plan called for spending $200,000 to demolish the pagoda rather than paying more than $1 million to repair it. Niche and plot holders have been fighting that plan by holding meetings, staging protest rallies and signing petitions.
Attorney Jerrold Guben said the cemetery owners, the Richards family, will work with the stakeholders to draft a new Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization plan to be presented to the court March 21.
"Saving the pagoda will certainly be an alternative," Guben said. "If somebody can come up with a reasonable price, possibly. This is the fourth amended plan, and it may still be a demolition of the pagoda or a renovation. It is up to the working group."
Although the pagoda is in bad shape, with a leaking roof and small pieces of decomposing concrete beams falling to the ground, niche holders say it was an important selling point when they bought into the cemetery, and it should be repaired.
Wayne Kotomori, the main voice opposing the bankruptcy plan, said an architect who examined the pagoda this month put repair costs at $600,000 to $800,000.
"My plan is to save the pagoda, and it can be saved at a much lower price than what the Richards brothers said," Kotomori told Judge Robert Faris and about 100 people gathered in the courtroom and in an auxiliary room watching the proceeding on a video monitor.
Kotomori said that if the pagoda had been repaired years ago, they wouldn't be in court now.
He objected to allowing a new plan to be developed, saying the stakeholders already had rejected the plan. He asked that the bankruptcy case be dismissed and a lawsuit be filed in circuit court for alleged criminal violations by the cemetery owners.
"We are here to see if the plan is confirmed or not," Kotomori said. "To have us in suspense for another 30 days is not acceptable."
Faris said he would not dismiss the bankruptcy case if there were still a chance for reorganization, and ordered a written status report filed with the court in 30 days.
Guben said meetings would begin Friday to develop a new plan and would include representatives for the pagoda niche holders: attorney David Farmer and City Council member Rod Tam.
Herbert "Monty" Richards Jr., whose father founded the cemetery in 1958 and turned it over to his children in 1973, said the business had been a financial drain for years and there was no money to repair the pagoda, built in 1966 as a replica of the Sanju Pagoda in Nara, Japan.
Resolutions have been introduced in both the City Council and state Legislature to try to have the structure listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, which could prevent it from being torn down.
Reach James Gonser at jgonser@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2431.
