THIS is a good news/bad news column. It's good if you live in the Aiea-Pearl City area and have been hoping to picnic and frolic at the long-planned public park on the shore of Pearl Harbor near Aloha Stadium. Clearing, grubbing and grassing of five acres is complete. Pearl Harbor park
is making progressKeep your fingers crossed on the next item, for reasons I'll make clear. It also looks as though construction will start in May, to be complete by next January, of a paved access roadway, a parking lot, restrooms, picnic tables and improved landscaping. Enough trees will be saved that there should be shaded retreats from the very beginning.
Farther down the line community volunteers may help build a pavilion for shelter and more shade.
The Phase 1 open area will be 10 acres from McGrew Point to Aiea Stream. Thirty acres is the long-term goal. It is a long ribbon between Kamehameha Highway and the harbor. Sometimes called Rainbow Bay park, its official name is Aiea Bay State Recreation Area. Later expansions may also include a Hawaii Veterans Hall, for which Pearl Harbor seems an appropriate site.
The reason for keeping fingers crossed is the bad news. Progress on this park has dragged over 27 years even though its backers have ranged from Gov. John A. Burns at the beginning to state Senate President Norman Mizuguchi in more recent years. Mizuguchi represents the district.
I have a copy of an April 24, 1994, letter to him from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. It said the clearing would begin in December 1994, which is 22 months before it actually did.
The letter in turn came about 11 months after the Navy hoped to get things going by turning over a key three-acre segment of land to state control. This was done in an on-site ceremony attended by Senator Mizuguchi on May 25, 1993. The whole area is a patchwork of state and federal holdings.
The ceremony in turn came 23 years after then-Governor Burns and Navy officials publicly agreed the park should be built as a needed community service under joint sponsorship. It was and is a part of the Navy's effort to strengthen community relations.
Many things contributed to the delays. McGrew Point Housing residents had nuisance concerns. The Navy had security concerns related to the VIP visitors at the Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet boathouse, from which they tour the harbor.
The boathouse is well away from Phase 1. Navy commanders changed. Governors and land-use directors changed. The park wasn't always on the front burner for key people.
EVEN after it got on the front burner, plans needed Navy approval, state review and final Navy sign-off. They also needed all the humbug that goes with getting state appropriations and awarding of contracts plus a shoreline survey and a special management area approval from the City-County of Honolulu.
A 15-foot city-county right-of-way along the route of an old rail line is used for bicycling and jogging between Pearl Harbor and Pearl City. The new park won't disturb that.
Alice Takehara is a former chairwoman of the Aiea Neighborhood Board, now vice chairwoman. She is keeping in close touch with the state parks division director, Ralston Nagata.
She has assured him community volunteers will help build a pavilion. Details aren't worked out but it could be through a combination of volunteer labor and publicly supplied materials. "What a wonderful thing this will be," she told me, "to help our people get out of their condos and townhouses."
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