Its final newsletter contains a disquieting paragraph: "Downtown has been enormously successful in restoring local confidence and attracting investment from the mainland, Europe and the Orient. But that kind of absentee investor is often indifferent to participating in organizations like DIA and tends to operate through a management structure which does not feel much responsibility for local problems."
Let me repeat the key words: "is often indifferent . . . does not feel much responsibility for local problems."
For those of us who do care, what is the answer? Trying to recreate DIA won't do it - not when downtown faces a 20 percent vacancy rate in office space that may balloon to 25 percent once the new First Hawaiian Center is fully open and sucks in tenants from elsewhere.
It doesn't matter that downtown has become one of the most attractive city hearts in the U.S. Business pocketbooks are too strapped.
Looking for leadership elsewhere is the obvious answer. Eventually downtown will recover from its present slump. We need to plan for a future that will keep it attractive and integrate it with revitalizations of Kakaako on one side and the Iwilei district on the other.
The only leadership that can be counted on to remain under control of our voters (for better or for worse) is government.
Its elected leaders and their appointees must cooperate with business, unions and others in the common interest, but more and more the key responsibility will be government's. DIA's closure underlines that.
Ten years ago businesses disbanded an even more effective agency - the Oahu Development Conference. ODC, formed by farsighted business leaders, brought a professional planner here from Philadelphia to educate themselves, government, the media and others about the methodology and importance of getting the future right by proper planning.
ODC contributed immensely to the design of Oahu's master plan and to sub-plans for areas such as the Capitol District, Waikiki and downtown. It helped the neighbor islands with a good planning example. It encouraged the University of Hawaii to create a program on planning that helped build a reservoir of qualified planners that didn't exist when ODC was formed in 1961.
Both ODC and DIA said in disbanding that their major work was done. There's truth in that, but there will be more to do in the future. We need to keep Hawaii attractive for our residents. We must maintain an economy that supplies the jobs and taxes we need. Sixty thousand people work downtown today, a major portion of them in white-collar jobs and businesses that didn't exist when DIA and ODC were formed.
PLANNING is one government function that we should save and make better even as we shrink government. Yes, shrink out planning's inefficiencies by cutting red tape and overlaps, shortening processes and reducing paperwork. But try even harder to get the best possible planners with vision at the top of the pyramid.
It can be done. Hawaii will thrive better if it is done.
Right now we face the need to elect the best possible leaders, community-minded ones. We need to throw our weight behind those who try bring the community together by developing a shared common vision. Then we must commit ourselves to help implement it.
Disbanding DIA may seem like just a small wake-up call, but it should be much more.