State to get back
Cannon Club site

The Army is stepping away
from earlier plans to reopen
the popular military facility

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

The Army has quietly abandoned plans to continue operations of the 52-year-old Cannon Club on the slopes of Diamond Head.

Instead, the Army intends to return the 7.6 acres on which the club is located to the state because it is ceded land, an Army official said.

The Army's Directorate of Public Works is conducting an environmental assessment and has proposed returning the land to the state by May 1999, Sara Fishburn, Army spokeswoman said.

The Army closed the military club's operations on June 1, 1997. Of its 25 employees, five were let go, one retired, and the others were placed in other Army facilities.

At that time, the Army said the closing was only temporary and that it would try to find a contractor to run the food and beverage operations. The Army said then that it would reopen in the fall of 1997 and would welcome civilian patrons as well. Fishburn said the Army received some interest in privatizing the club's operations.

The Army had controlled more than 700 acres when it established Fort Ruger on Diamond Head and inside the crater in 1906. It opened the Cannon Club in 1945. The 18,000-square-foot banquet pavilion and open dining area were added in 1982 to the dining room and cocktail lounge.

Since then all of the land except for the Cannon Club property had reverted to the state. Some of it is used for the Kapiolani Community College campus.

Ken Chan, chairman of the Diamond Head Neighborhood Board, said he hasn't heard what will become of the parcel. In the past some area residents have advocated that the land be incorporated into the Diamond Head Monument and the club's building be converted into a cultural center. A master plan for the area was adopted by the Legislature in 1970 after Diamond Head was designated a national monument in 1968, but it was never fully implemented.

Ralston Nagata, state parks administrator, said the state Department of Land and Natural Resources would welcome the return of the Cannon Club land and "hopefully, it would come to us and be a part of the Diamond Head Monument."

Under current plans, and if the funding becomes available, the Hawaii Army National Guard hopes to relocate all of its operations and 250 people from within the 120-acre Diamond Head Crater to Barbers Point Naval Air Station by the year 2001. The naval base is set to close next year. It also hopes to transfer its Army Guard operations on 22nd Avenue -- mainly those belonging to the 29th Infantry Brigade -- to Barbers Point by the year 2002, said Lt. Col. Richard Young, facilities management officer.

That would only leave the main headquarters building for the Department of Defense and the headquarters of the Hawaii Air National Guard on Diamond Head Road. The Federal Aviation Administration's radar approach control center in the crater will move to Honolulu Airport within the next three years.