Posted on: Tuesday, November 30, 2004
EDITORIAL
Moanalua lands must be preserved forever
The entire ahupua'a of Moanalua — two valleys, from the Ko'olau peaks to the sea — were Kamehameha lands that passed through Bernice Pauahi Bishop to her friend, Samuel Mills Damon, who was her husband's business partner in what is now First Hawaiian Bank.
Advertiser library photo It now becomes an urgent mission that these beautiful lands remain in their present use in perpetuity. The state, the city and interested non-profits such as the Nature Conservancy must work with the Damon trustees to ensure their public-spiritedness doesn't falter and allow this magnificent legacy to somehow end up under subdivisions and strip malls.
The gardens and Moanalua Valley are now owned by Samuel Damon's trust, which has been liquidating assets during the past few years in anticipation of its termination. Damon, who died in 1924, stipulated that his trust would terminate after his last grandchild died, and that occurred earlier this month.
Among recent sales, 224 commercial/industrial acres in Mapunapuna and Kalihi Kai were sold to a Massachussetts-based real-estate investment firm last year. Other land in Salt Lake and Moanalua were sold to residential development in the 1950s and '60s.
But the garden and the remaining Moanalua Valley land, 3,700 acres in total, are special. The Damon family fought tenaciously to keep the H-3 highway from running through the valley, long delaying the project until it was finally moved to Halawa Valley.
It's clear that these lands, if reclassified to allow development, would be worth far more than local governments or nonprofits could pay. That must not be allowed to happen. The lands must be preserved for a grateful public to cherish forever.
Damon at once set aside the Moanalua Gardens area "for public use and enjoyment," and so it remains to this day. Moanalua Valley also has been open to the public for "appropriate recreational and educational purposes" ever since.
Monkeypod trees at Moanalua Gardens attract visitor and local alike.
