Kane'ohe courthouse to open
By Eloise Aguiar
Advertiser Windward O'ahu Writer
KANE'OHE — Kane'ohe's new district courthouse opens this week, leaving behind a crowded and cramped facility on Kahuhipa Street in exchange for a spacious building that houses a courtroom equipped with technology designed to bring court proceedings into the 21st century.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
On Tuesday, Chief Justice Ronald Moon will officiate at a blessing ceremony for the $9.5 million Abner Paki Hale, the first new courthouse to be built since 1987.
The courthouse, on the corner of Po'okela Street and Kea'ahala Road, will open for business Thursday; a blessing ceremony is set for Tuesday. The 28,000-square-foot, two-level facility replaces a 20-year-old, 6,549-square-foot facility.
Planners began designing the Abner Paki Hale about 1991. During the process the community debated its location while the judiciary considered options to address security, utility and functionality.
"We're not looking to just accommodate the present," said Jean Yamane, deputy chief court administrator. "We're looking to have something for our future needs."
The high-tech courtroom, the first of its kind in Hawai'i, is equipped with six computer terminals for jurors, video-conference capabilities, eight digital cameras for video recording and surveillance, a portable evidence presentation system, real-time transcription and a television news camera hookup, Yamane said during a tour of the facility.
A judge will be able to control much of the equipment from the bench. Computer terminals also will be available at the prosecutor and defendant's tables.
Adjacent to Windward Community College on the corner of Po'okela Street and Kea'ahala Road, the court will open for business Thursday. Staff members wanted to move in the day they toured the building two weeks ago, said Rochelle Hasuko, Kane'ohe court administrator.
The 28,000-square-foot, two-level courthouse replaces a 20-year-old, 6,549-square-foot facility that had little storage space, few parking stalls and a cramped 10-by-8-foot waiting area. The new building comes with a 55-space parking lot.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
The 14-member staff, which handles as many as 500 cases a day, looks forward to its new offices, which include ergonomic furniture, new computers and safety glass that separates them from the public, Hasuko said.
Sean Franck, video technician with Court Vision Communications of Thousand Oaks, Calif., checks out one of six video monitors installed in the jury box of Courtroom A at the Kane'ohe Courthouse. The courthouse was built with expansion in mind and will be able to accommodate Circuit Court jury trials.
"They've been waiting for this for a long time," she said.
The building's design is reminiscent of an old Hawai'i home whose large porches invited guests to congregate and enter, said Brian Takahashi, principal of AM Partners Inc., which designed the building.
The corridor outside the courts is open to the view and lined with wood benches. An oak wainscot is used throughout the common areas and the courtrooms.
The style of the building is meant to complement the architecture of the neighboring college, Takahashi said.
"So it was in context and didn't look like a spaceship that had landed there," he said.
Takahashi said his company tried to design security measures that were unobtrusive. The courthouse is equipped with "duress buttons," to page security, at staff counters and in the judges' chambers. Security cameras are placed throughout the facility. Parking gates and doors to the 10 holding cells will be electronically controlled and monitored from a central control station.
"Security is basically a backdrop but very present in the building," Takahashi said.
The courthouse is named for Justice Abner Paki, one of the original Hawai'i Supreme Court justices, who served from 1842 to 1847. He was also a member of the House of Nobles, a member of the Privy Counsel and chamberlain to King Kamehameha III.
Reach Eloise Aguiar at eaguiar@honoluluadvertiser.com. or 234-5266.
