The former 3,700-acre Barbers Point Naval Air Station nestled between Kapolei and 'Ewa Beach was closed six years ago and much of the land turned over to the state and county. Planners envisioned the rise of a motorsports raceway, world-class aquarium, regional shoreline park, businesses, amphitheater and international sporting complex.

Today, Kalaeloa stands as one of the most calamitous efforts at redeveloping a closed military installation in the country despite more than a decade of planning.

While there are pockets of renovated hangars, homes and other buildings on the former base, kiawe trees sprouting through brittle asphalt rival what little there has been of planned growth.

"It's been frustrating because for 10-plus years I've worked at getting government and the community involved, and where are we?" said Maeda Timson, a Makakilo resident who in 1994 began serving on the first of two quasi-government boards charged with facilitating Kalaeloa's renewal.

The shortcomings of Kalaeloa are especially relevant now with the Pentagon announcing this month plans to close or shrink over 60 more major military bases around the country.

The future of those facilities could be bleak if they mirror the past six years at Kalaeloa. Fumbled planning efforts, fragmented land ownership, delayed land transfers, substandard infrastructure and a lack of investment have thwarted development plans at the former naval air station.

To date, the Navy has yet to transfer 40 percent of the land. The property's infrastructure needs upgrades that are estimated to cost between $118 million to $275 million. And topping off Kalaeloa's uncertain future is the Navy's two-year-old consideration to reuse part of the area for an air wing attached to a potential Hawai'i-ported aircraft carrier strike group.

Lack of certainty

Rubbish on Kalaeloa's white sand beaches often bothers fisherman Elpidio Tumaneng. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

There has been some new hope for the mostly neglected and largely deserted community thanks to revived state planning efforts, and more activity from a couple dozen businesses — from a used-car dealership to a carpenter training facility — that have located at Kalaeloa over the last few years.

But the original grand schemes have been dashed.

"This is the worst base closure process of all the bases closed around the world," said Mike Oakland, who has spent more than a decade trying to replace Hawai'i Raceway Park at Campbell Industrial Park with a $100 million facility at Kalaeloa.

Oakland, who heads the partnership that owns the 41-year-old raceway, initially reached an agreement with the Navy in the 1990s. Then two years ago he reached a tentative agreement with the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands after DHHL acquired the land envisioned for the new raceway for professional events and local drivers.

But Oakland's plan hit another wall because of the pending aircraft carrier decision. "We're still on hold," he said.

Concern that carrier air wing operations might conflict with other uses or lead the Navy to reclaim land has stalled many redevelopment initiatives.

Such setbacks from early plans have held down job creation at the former base to one of the lowest among military installations closed since 1988, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.

Only 33 civilian jobs were created at Kalaeloa as of October 2003, according to the report. This comes after 618 jobs were lost when the base closed in 1999. Of 73 bases closed since 1988, only six have fared worse.

Today it's estimated that there are about 100 new jobs at the former Barbers station.

Wanting to succeed

An old Navy housing parking lot sits unused. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

At the former Orlando Naval Training Center, an 1,100-acre Florida base closed in the late 1990s, a private developer bought the property, demolished its infrastructure and next year expects to complete the last of 3,600 homes, offices, shopping outlets, schools and parks.

Glenview Naval Air Station near Chicago was closed in 1995 and has since been reborn with a $250 million mall, corporate complex, homes, two golf courses and more than 3,000 jobs.

Stanton Enomoto, hired last August as the state's director for planning and redevelopment at Kalaeloa, is familiar with many more success stories, and hopes Kalaeloa will eventually become one.

"People want this area to succeed," he said.

Kalaeloa today is part light industrial business park, part airport, part residential neighborhood and part militaristic ghost town.

Also in the mix is a shoreline with as much white-sand beach as Waikiki, vast thickets of dry vegetation, bad roads, utility problems and vacant and vandalized buildings.

"A lot of the place looks shameful," Timson said.

Enomoto has heard many a similar refrain. "This is the stuff that the community raises hell about," he said on a recent tour of the area pointing to a boarded up former Navy mess hall with broken windows, graffiti and trees growing through the parking lot littered with an old couch and tires.

The area stands in stark contrast to two of O'ahu's fastest-growing communities on different sides of the former base, Kapolei and 'Ewa Beach.

New money adds hope

Whether Kalaeloa's envisioned transformation makes progress largely depends on the Hawai'i Community Development Authority, a state planning agency with a board of directors comprising community and government leaders.

The agency, which has guided redevelopment of state and private land in Kaka'ako for 29 years, was assigned to do the same for Kalaeloa in July 2002.

To start, the agency received $50,000 from the Barbers Point Redevelopment Commission, which was formed in 1994 and did a lot of planning, maintenance, security and land transfer work, but effectively shut down in 2001 after state and federal financing cuts.

The $50,000 didn't get the agency far. "We were pretty much in a maintenance mode," said Daniel Dinell, a former hotel planning executive who joined the authority as executive director early last year.

Aside from an $118,000 assessment to landowners, no significant operating money was obtained until last year when the authority received a $450,000 grant from the Federal Economic Development Administration, which required a $450,000 match that the Legislature approved.

The $900,000, which is restricted to planning and has to be spent by September, bought the agency a couple of prizes.

One was a dedicated Kalaeloa development director in Enomoto, who previously oversaw the Navy's restoration and return of Kaho'olawe as director of the state's Kaho'olawe Island Reserve Commission.

The state agency also commissioned a $625,000 economic feasibility study from international planning firm Belt Collins and two Mainland companies experienced with military base reuse projects. A draft of the study's findings is expected to be available in late summer.

The agency went on to meet with area residents, elected officials and landowners in March and April to hear their concerns and desires.

Comments received included the perception that it will be five years before any significant improvements are made, and that beaches, ball fields, roads and sidewalks are poorly maintained.

The agency has set goals to start an initial phase of design and construction of capital improvements by mid-2007. But it needs more money to meet its goals.

A $1 million budget request died in the Legislature this year, and the agency is considering raising money by assessing landowners, obtaining grants and soliciting volunteer work.

"We'll just have to find the ways and means to keep the momentum moving forward," Enomoto said.

Many nearby residents like Timson say basic improvements to security and maintenance have been deferred for far too long.

"It would be a big improvement if the city took over (the beach parks)," said Elpidio Tumaneng, a Waipahu resident who frequently fishes at Kalaeloa and complains about the homeless, rubbish and drug dealing there.

Land left in limbo

The city owns 86 acres of mostly roadway, and manages a camping area between Nimitz and White Plains beaches, but its Department of Parks & Recreation never accepted 485 acres largely envisioned to be a regional shoreline park.

A department official referred a request for comment to the Hawai'i Community Development Authority, which said the city had concerns over environmental liability, cost and the uncertainty over the aircraft carrier air wing.

Like the city's rejection, several other expected land transfers are in limbo or canceled, muddling the future of roughly 1,600 acres, or about 40 percent of the former base.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected two parcels with endangered species. The state Department of Land and Natural Resources rejected 135 acres of planned park land because of maintenance concerns and the ground condition after the Navy dug up two feet of vegetation and soil to remove bullets from roughly 50 acres.

The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands has taken title to only half of 555 acres it agreed to receive as a settlement of Hawaiian claims to federal land around the state.

Department spokesman Lloyd Yonenaka said the pending transfer, which includes the Navy's former headquarters building and mostly scrubland, was put on hold because of the carrier issue.

"Once this decision is made, it will clear up a lot of things on what we're going to do and how to get there," he said.

The Navy has not publicly disclosed any timetable for a decision, though one is expected soon. The Hawai'i Community Development Authority said it will plan what it can. But other stakeholders have put planning on hold.

DHHL froze long-term lease plans with prospective tenants, instead renting property to users on month-to-month terms.

Most short-term tenants at Kalaeloa are businesses needing cheap storage and base yards, such as companies dealing in fireworks, portable toilets, equipment rentals and construction.

Some of Kalaeloa's bigger benefactors and employers are the state's general-aviation airport and the Hawaii National Guard.

The National Guard has spent about $20 million relocating operations from Diamond Head as part of $100 million in projected spending at Kalaeloa over 10 years.

Kalaeloa Airport, a reliever field for Honolulu International Airport and a base for military and Honolulu Community College flight training, handles about 150,000 annual takeoffs, landings, fly-bys and touch-and-gos.

Ongoing and future upgrades to the airport include runway repaving, taxiway light replacements, installation of an instrument landing navigation system, new hangars, fuel tank additions and upgraded fire fighting equipment. The state's cost is $1.3 million, complemented by $8.8 million in federal spending.

Other operations that have taken root at Kalaeloa are an auto body shop for at-risk Kapolei High School students, a community college flight school, honey bee aviary, state-run homeless housing and an operation to care for vehicles of soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The vehicle care operator, Pasha Group, started erecting 23 tent-like buildings on unneeded Kalaeloa airport taxiways in December 2003 at a cost of more than $7 million.

The operation employed 65 people at its peak, and expects to complete its contract with the military in a month or so, though Pasha plans to continue the service for other users.

Services fall short

One of the challenges Pasha faced that severely restricts economic development in the area is poor infrastructure.

The Pasha operation runs on generators and wireless communications. The company had to build a paved road to the property, clear dense haole koa and kiawe, and bore out clogged dry-well sewers.

It will cost $100,000 to power the electrical station at the Pasha site where all lines were cut to structurally unsound utility poles.

"That's a major tragedy," Charles McCann Jr., general manager of the Pasha operation, said of infrastructure conditions.

The state several years ago estimated the cost to upgrade road, water, drainage and electrical systems over 20 years would be between $118 million (for basic upgrades) and $275 million (to comply with modern city standards) for the base.

"It's holding so much back," Enomoto said. "It's so large that no single government agency can do it. No private developer can do it. It's really going to take a lot of partnering."

The Navy was expected to reach agreements with Hawaiian Electric Co. and the city to take over utilities, but has terminated efforts except for the sewer system transfer.

"The possibility of transferring the electrical and water systems was previously considered," said Lt. Barbara Mertz, public affairs officer with the Navy in Hawai'i. But "there are presently no plans in place" for doing that, she added.

Board of Water Supply business development principal executive Erwin Kawata said issues over costs and upgrade requirements could not be resolved. "It's unfortunate," he said. "We are helping (the Navy) as much as we can."

Hawaiian Electric spokeswoman Lynne Unemori would only say the company and the Navy could not agree on a transfer. As it is, many tenants on the former base receive "estimated" electric bills because there aren't individual meters for each home or building.

Left with a bad deal

The city Department of Environmental Services expects to take over the sewer system, which for storm drainage consists of dry wells that terminate in the ground instead of drains leading to the ocean.

Jack Pobuk, department program coordinator, said the city anticipates spending only $5 million to $7 million over 10 years to maintain the sewer system as is, but does not expect to make more major upgrades. To fully maintain the system for 20 years would cost an estimated $57 million.

Enomoto of the Hawai'i Community Development Authority said the breakdown of utility transfer negotiations is troubling. "For both sides to walk away just creates more challenges," he said. "We have to try to see what options or possibilities there are to get the parties back to the table to complete the transfers. That goes to the benefit of the whole region."

There has been little public criticism that the Navy left the state, city and residents with a bad deal. The airport was valued at $500 million, and generates income for the state.

DHHL received its land initially valued at $74.5 million as a settlement of Hawaiian claims to 1,350 acres of federal land around the state. Kalaeloa tenants pay the department $73,642 in monthly rent, or an annualized $871,704.

The Navy also spent $66.8 million on environmental cleanup for the land it transferred or planned to transfer.

However, the Navy retained much valuable property covering about 1,000 acres, including rental housing, a golf course, commissary and beach cottages for continued military use.

About 450 acres, including undeveloped parcels around the golf course that may be ideal for homes, are being brokered for the Navy by private firm Ford Island Properties. The company is studying infrastructure needs and has no current plans or offers to sell the property.

"Right now it is one of the big unknowns," said Steve Colon, senior vice president of Hunt Building Co., a partner in Ford Island Properties.

Ford Island Properties received ownership of the 547 Navy homes in return for renovating and managing the units as well as redeveloping parts of Ford Island at Pearl Harbor. Ford Island Properties is now selling the mostly rented homes to a California real estate firm for an undisclosed price.

Enomoto said the Hawai'i Community Development Authority hopes to crystallize a long-term strategic reuse plan for stakeholders so they see the value of investing in the area over decades.

"A lot of the folks out there don't have a 20-year or 50-year concept of what the area holds," he said.

Timson, the longtime community participant in Kalaeloa planning, reflects on the nearly 30 years it has taken the agency to transform Kaka'ako.

"It didn't just get rebuilt," she said. "It's getting done in little phases. HCDA is allowing (Kalaeloa) to take baby steps. We got to take baby steps to move forward."