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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Monday, January 26, 2004

EDITORIAL
Car dealership not ideal urban renewal

In the 1960s, throngs of Honolulu residents and business owners in the then-ramshackle Kuku'i district were forced to move to make room for a massive urban-renewal project.

And so it's rather anti-climactic decades later that the best the city can do for a core section of the urban-renewal area is a car dealership.

The city has accepted an offer from Pflueger Group LLC to buy a downtown municipal parking lot known as Block J in the Kuku'i redevelopment project. The deal is subject to City Council approval.

Frankly, we're disappointed that the city cannot attract a better use for this prime location. This is not a knock on car dealerships. It's about the history of the place. Former proposed uses have included an international trade center and affordable rentals.

But these projects have failed to get off the ground for one reason or another. That doesn't mean the city should throw in the towel.

While the city has a responsibility to get the most for its money, it also has an obligation to get the best use for the greatest number of people. We fail to see how a car dealership meets that goal.

Kuku'i's urban-renewal plan started in the late 1950s when the Honolulu Redevelopment Agency determined that the area bounded by Liliha, Queen Emma and Beretania streets and Vineyard was filled with slums that needed to be bulldozed for the greater public good.

Among the condemned buildings were also Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, two Chinese schools, two dozen Chinese societies and other historic facilities that gave Honolulu its distinctive character.

"It would be a criminal and wasteful mistake in creating a clean new city to destroy all of the old, to wash out the salt which gives it its savor," wrote one Honolulu editorial writer about the project in 1961.

Nonetheless, the agency moved ahead with a massive plan to buy the entire tract, relocate the inhabitants and sell the land to private construction concerns. Condemnation proceedings began.

Proposals included affordable housing, a cultural center, commercial areas and a park. But for many years the land lay fallow because of delays and disagreements over development. Much of the area was used for parking.

By the mid-1970s, some projects took off, but Block J remained a parking lot that has most recently generated $37,000 a month for the city.

It would be a pity if all those Kuku'i folks all those years ago were displaced for anything less than they had been promised.