Regents assail plans for UH West O'ahu

By Beverly Creamer and Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Staff Writers

Hong even moved to close the present West O'ahu campus that serves 800 students from Pearl City to Wai'anae and offers distance learning to the Neighbor Islands. That proposal was quickly tabled in a two-day board meeting in Hilo, but it indicated the seriousness of this latest setback to the 30-year dream to build a four-year campus to serve the state's fastest-growing population base.

The high cost of building a new campus — $350 million over 12 years — and the tremendous need for maintenance and repairs on the 10 other UH campuses prompted strong opposition to a new West O'ahu campus from board chairwoman Patricia Lee and regents Kitty Lagareta and Jane Tatibouet as well as Hong.

"It's a big huge chunk of money and ... we are absolutely not approving anything to go forward," said Lagareta, referring to the UH administration's new long-range plan that would divide the Kapolei acreage in half, with 250 acres for the campus and the other 250 for creation of a surrounding village either sold or leased to private developers.

And with a backlog of repairs and maintenance on UH campuses statewide standing at $180 million, Lee said: "The fact is we can't maintain what we have."

"As we go around and visit all these campuses, we see tremendous needs with facilities ... tremendous need with the programs," Lagareta said at the conclusion of the meeting in Hilo. "I mean, things are falling apart, labs don't have equipment, all of this."

Lagareta, Tatibouet and Hong were appointed recently by Gov. Linda Lingle, and their opposition reflects much of what she has said about the West O'ahu campus. While the governor said she supports a new campus in West O'ahu, according to her press spokesman Russell Pang, she also says the state can't afford it. And she questions how it can be maintained and staffed when there is a backlog in repairs and maintenance at the other campuses, Pang said.

Partnership possible

Still, regents offered a potential lifeline for the new Kapolei campus, directing UH administrators to look at partnering with private development. But they also asked for a financial overview of the projected costs of operating such a campus, and a thorough roster of what its academic programs would be.

"If they can get somebody to pay to develop this ... , more power to them," Lagareta said. "If they can, we'll look at it."

But at this point, the project is "on life-support," Lagareta said.

Just a year ago the new campus appeared to be on a fast track, with $8 million budgeted for planning by the 2001 Legislature, and optimism at one time that the school's first phase could be partially opened by 2005. However, the plan stalled with a change in governors and a sour economy.

West O'ahu chancellor Bill Pearman yesterday called it a "roller-coaster" ride for his small school that currently sits on the edge of Leeward Community College, and said this may be the "wake-up call" its supporters need to mobilize. And he said a public/private partnership is a viable option.

"The long-range development plan includes housing, a strip mall and big-box shopping and that could be a public/private partnership ... in which the state would not have to bear the full cost of construction," he said.

Money a main issue

Meanwhile, Sen. Cal Kawamoto, D-18th (Waipahu, Pearl City), who has been pressing for years for a campus to serve an area projected to grow within a decade to 300,000 people — 80,000 of them children — said money should not be the issue.

Financing a proposed $84 million first phase through general obligation bonds would cost the state less than $6 million a year for debt service on a bond of around $100 million, Kawamoto said.

But Tatibouet and the other three repeatedly hammered at the potential costs of a new West O'ahu campus.

"And then we look at taking three or four hundred million for a whole new campus ... ," Tatibouet said after the regents meeting. "How can we even conceive of spending this kind of money?"

Chairwoman Lee agreed, saying "this is not the time" to move forward on a new campus.

"When we're short of funds, we have to maintain what we have," Lee said. "We have the med school obligation, and that's $150 million, and that's only Phase 1. We've got the cancer research institute."

UH director of capital improvements Jan Yokota said plans will definitely go forward to look at "different development alternatives" for the West O'ahu campus.

That includes working with private developers to build a campus while leasing or selling them part of the acreage for residential or commercial use. Yokota said that has been done successfully with some Mainland schools.

However, the prevailing sentiment at the meeting of the 12-member Board of Regents was Hong's.

Even years ago as a student at UH, he said, he marched against the project.

"We said from the beginning it was a white elephant, it was a pipe dream, and it still is that today.

"The tragedy is you have a lot of people who have invested their lives, their academic careers in West O'ahu college, and they have been keeping these people on board with that pipe dream for so long when they should have made the tough decision a long time ago and terminated the program."

Students said they feel otherwise.

"They always say they don't have enough money, but it's generally a good idea (to expand)," said international student Mari Fujita, 38, who will be looking for another school to continue her education after she graduates from Leeward Community College.

"If I choose a four-year college, it should feel like a four-year college," she said. "This doesn't appeal to me. A four-year campus should be bigger. (If not) it doesn't motivate people to go."

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013 and Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 935-3916 on the Big Island.