Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Hawaii’s World
AS Honolulu looks to its future I see three visionary projects as our top priorities to achieve in the next 10 years. Three ideas to
improve HonoluluThey should be a lot less divisive than the long fight to build H-3 -- a winner -- but won't be achieved easily.
Recently, we have done well with beautifying the Kuhio Beach Park area and the promenade along the Ala Wai in Waikiki. Prior to that, the redevelopment of the Fort DeRussy open space vastly enhanced Waikiki's attractiveness.
We now should focus on three projects that will further upgrade Honolulu for both residents and visitors:
It is good news that banker Walter Dods will lead a fund-raising effort for a world-class aquarium at the entrance to Kewalo Basin.
Bruce Carlson at the present small aquarium in Waikiki envisions a structure as dramatic in its way as Sydney Opera House -- with the actual design still to be decided. The nation's current leading aquariums are in Boston, Baltimore and on the shore of Monterey Bay, Calif. Monterey incorporates its bay marine life into its displays.
We can do something none of the others can do in displaying tropical fish, some of the most colorful of all. Our naturally warm waters make it possible and give even our present small aquarium a special edge over others elsewhere.
The golfers who now use the course can be relocated to the open spaces of Sand Island where they surely can find happiness once their grumpiness over relocation has run its course.
It will require a tunnel under the entrance to Honolulu Harbor but the numbers have been run to show this is affordable using fascinating new tunnel construction techniques.
The tunnel would be built ashore, in part resembling giant cinder bricks, sunk into place segment by segment and ultimately pumped dry.
EFFORTS to save a few bucks by locating the highway through central Sand Island should be scrapped in favor of bordering the long park on the coast of Sand Island for maximum beauty.
We already have a first-rate downtown area with an unbelievable collection of assets -- Iolani Palace, the historic Judiciary Building, our uniquely open State Capitol, the Honolulu municipal complex, Kawaiahao Church, the downtown commercial area and high rises, Chinatown, Aloha Tower Marketplace plus the cruise piers where the world's biggest ships pull up.
All this lies in front of a beautiful mountain backdrop and amid mostly congenial weather!
Much of the waterfront already is shifted into parks and away from non-marine industrial use. A Sand Island oil refinery mercifully was nixed and relocated to Barbers Point.
The vision and determination to achieve the above three projects can make Oahu a still more congenial and beautiful place. Let's go for it.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.