What’s under
Kalia Tower?
Who knows?Archeological monitoring
was never performed
during its excavation
Guest rooms in the Kalia Tower at Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki have been closed since July because of a mold problem. But if there's a skeleton under the Kalia Tower, no one knows.
Only recently, the state Historic Preservation Division learned it has no idea what is in the dirt under the Kalia Tower, two years after the tower was built.
Under a plan approved in April 1998, the Kalia Tower's construction manager was to bring in an archeological consultant to keep an eye out for underground burial remains and artifacts during excavation. Such material is needed to piece together Hawaii's history.
Honolulu firm Construction Management & Development Inc. was construction manager for the Kalia Tower project, and James Gomes, the company's executive vice president and chief operating officer, was project director.
The Historic Preservation Division was initially assured by Gomes that archeological monitoring had been done at the tower's excavation site, according to a recent letter by Holly McEldowney, acting administrator of the division. But Gomes did not respond to the state's May 2000 request for preliminary findings from monitoring of the excavation site, the letter said.
In March of this year, Gomes wrote the state to say his company didn't start monitoring the site until May 2000. By then, the steel frame of the 24-story tower was in place. The 453-room tower opened to guests in May 2001.
"We don't know if there was anything there or not because nobody with any expertise observed it," said Paul H. Rosendahl, president of archeological services company Paul H. Rosendahl Ph.D. Inc. in Hilo.
Rosendahl said his firm, which was working with CM&D, wasn't told when the excavation started, as planned. A Rosendahl employee learned the excavation had started by accident when he stopped by the Kalia Tower job site in Waikiki.
"He happened to stop by there and found that work was already in progress and when he went and looked at the Kalia Tower site, he found that (the excavation) that should have been monitored had already been completed," Rosendahl said. His company told the state.
In a letter last week to the Historic Preservation Division, Gomes said his company was "under the impression that monitoring wasn't required" under the tower because the soil had been brought in from somewhere else, which is known as fill soil.
That impression was wrong, according to the Historic Preservation Division. Fill soil, depending upon where it comes from, can have human burial remains and cultural deposits, just like original soil, said Sara Collins, archeologist with the Historic Preservation Division. In addition, fill soil can show evidence of the existence of fire pits, which are useful in archaeology, Collins said. Radioactive material in charcoal can be used to determine the time when people were in the area.
"Unfortunately, no monitoring occurred for these areas and CM&D regrets that our interpretation differed," Gomes wrote the state last week.
Gomes was traveling last week and did not respond to two messages left at the CM&D office in Honolulu.
A Hilton spokesman said he had no information about where the Kalia Tower fill soil came from, or when it was brought in.
Collins said the state has no recourse for the lack of monitoring at the site and will accept Gomes' explanation of the matter. If the Rosendahl firm in Hilo had been allowed to look at the Kalia Tower site before the excavation, the state could have agreed with Gomes that fill soil under the tower didn't require constant archeological monitoring, Collins said. But Rosendahl's company was not given that opportunity.
A 1993 City Council resolution that granted a permit to build the Kalia Tower required that the state receive a plan for archeological monitoring, which it did. The city resolution did not say what would happen if the plan weren't followed.
"It sounds like something fell through the cracks there," said Steve Holmes, a former city Councilman who voted against Hilton's Kalia Tower permit in 1993 for various environmental reasons. "It's kind of hard to go back once you put a building on top of it."
The state Historic Preservation Division has two archaeologists who are responsible for reviewing land at construction sites on Oahu, Collins said. Their office reviews 200 to 300 projects each month. In addition, Collins is the sole archaeologist responsible for watching sites on Molokai. Collins said she spends most of her time on paperwork and she doesn't have time to drive by every site. "I wish I did, but I don't," Collins said. It's basically an honor system, she said. "We tend to be reactive."
Holmes said the Historic Preservation Division needs more staff, and that the state needs stronger laws.
The Kalia Tower is set to reopen sometime between July and September this year, and guest rooms will have been closed for a year by mold. Hilton has said the mold is costing $56 million to remedy in a tower that cost $95 million to build.
Hilton recently sued several of the companies that helped build the tower, blaming them for design and construction flaws that allegedly led to the mold.
Hilton did not name CM&D, the tower's construction manager, in the lawsuit.
According to CM&D's Web site, the company's other projects include renovations at the Hilton Seattle Airport hotel, Ward Entertainment Center, renovations at the Maui Marriott and the 2100 Kalakaua retail complex.
There may be human burial remains under the Kalia Tower, or there might not be. No one knows.
From a spiritual perspective, some people might believe that improper displacement of iwi kupuna, or skeletal ancestral remains, could have caused problems for Hilton, said Van Horn Diamond, chairman of the Oahu Burial Council.
"Maybe that's why the Hilton is having the mold," Diamond said. The only way of proving that, he noted, is to dig up the ground under the tower.
"Prudence should have dictated a more conservative approach," he said.
A review of state records in the early 1990s showed that excavation near the Kalia Tower had unearthed human burial remains and trash pits, according to the Historic Preservation Division.
In 2000, 37 sets of Hawaiian skeletal remains were found below Kalakaua Avenue at a city water main construction site, halting the project. Last year, the city dedicated a $250,000 burial mound for the remains, and others found in Waikiki.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recently halted construction on a section of the planned Wal-Mart/Sam's Club complex at the Keeaumoku superblock site because 25 sets of human remains were found there. Some of the remains may be from before the 1850s.
"We thought there could be burials there, so we asked that an archaeologist be there if remains were discovered," said McEldowney, of the state Historic Preservation Division. "Turns out we were right."
Wal-Mart has published a legal notice asking descendants to help decide what to do with the remains.