IT sits at the Diamond Head end of Waikiki, its rotten concrete collapsed into the murky pool: the whole area is a metaphor for a tangle of politicians' promises and grand gestures. Natatorium dispute
needs compromiseOnce, its fans say, the Waikiki Natatorium was a thing of beauty, a pool grand enough to capture the strokes of swimming champions like Duke Kahanamoku. And it stood as a living memorial to the Hawaii residents killed in World War I.
Today, however, it is a huge white elephant flanked by a series of porta-potties and a crude shower on one side and the Waikiki Aquarium on the other.
If Hollywood ever needed a set for a haunted pool, the Natatorium would be the number one location.
It isn't a metaphor for faded elegance, but for bureaucratic stubbornness. The pool is closed because its decks are collapsed, its walls broken, its stands rotting and its sides covered with sand. The city wants to spend $11.5 million to tear down and rebuild the stands and walls.
There are new plans to make the ocean water flow through the pool, plans to put a new type of sand in the bottom so it won't be the murky silt trap that it is now.
The pool has been meticulously studied by coastal geologists and oceanographers, who feel confident they can deliver a clean, safe pool.
The problem, however, rests not with the pool, but with the politicians' constituents who don't want it.
The Natatorium's Diamond Head wall has been stopping the sand traveling along Waikiki Beach since 1927. That sand formed San Souci beach, which has become one of the last local places in Waikiki.
The plans to overhaul the Natatorium triggered the formation of the Kaimana Beach Coalition, which is tirelessly opposing city plans. Of course, the city's plans are also just as fiercely defended by the Friends of the Natatorium, a volunteer group that would like to run the facility as a memorial.
The plan, sponsored by Mayor Jeremy Harris, needs City Council approval. Councilwoman Donna Mercado Kim opposes the plan and it remains stalled.
There is also the question of a needed state permit, which the Board of Land and Natural Resources is considering now.
Opponents are fighting the plan with technical questions, but it seems the best reason for the city to simply reconsider came from the state's deputy director of health, Bruce Anderson, who testified before the land board last week as a private citizen.
THE area is also known as the starting point for the Waikiki Rough Water Swim, one of the largest open ocean swims in the country.
"When you look at the public benefit, what are we trying to preserve here?" Anderson asks.
He says swimmers remember the pool as an unfriendly, awkward venue.
No official national or international swimming organization sanctions 100-meter salt-water races, so there are no swimming records to set.
Without mediation or compromise, it seems clear that a lawsuit will be brought by whichever side loses before the Council and the land board.
With dwindling funds, employee lay-offs and a possible run for governor ahead of him, this is the sort of issue that Mayor Harris could use to show some skill at compromise and statesmanship.