A top city official Honolulu Managing Director Ben Lee has returned dozens of territorial-era city curbstones, just as state officials have opened an inquiry into whether Lee violated state historic preservation laws.
returns old curbstones
The state is probing the case,
in which the city managing director
got the stones for free
By Rick Daysog
rdaysog@starbulletin.com
Eric Seitz, Lee's attorney, said his client recently gave the curbstones back to Royal Contracting Inc., which delivered them to Lee's Punchbowl house in December 2001.
According to Seitz, Royal Contracting told Lee that the curbstones had no value, but Lee decided to return them after questions were raised about the stones in a Star-Bulletin story earlier this month.
Lee did not pay Royal Contracting for the curbstones and did not list them as gifts in his annual disclosures with the city Ethics Commission.
"He was under the impression that they didn't have any value to anybody," Seitz said.
Leonard Leong, Royal Contracting's vice president, confirmed that Lee returned the curbstones. Leong, chairman of the Honolulu Police Commission, declined comment when asked whether he would return the stones to the city, saying only that he would abide by state regulations.
Leong previously told the Star-Bulletin that he did not charge Lee for the curbstones since many of them were irregularly shaped and were unusable.
He also said the curbstones were technically owned by Royal Contracting since the company was responsible for hauling away old building materials to a dump site.
Royal Contracting is a major city contractor, with more than $38 million in city work since 1994. The company also is under investigation by the state Campaign Spending Commission, which is looking into political donations to Mayor Jeremy Harris' campaign.
The curbstone controversy has attracted the attention of the state Department of Land & Natural Resources. Its enforcement branch has opened an inquiry into the matter.
Holly McEldowney, acting administrator of DLNR's Historic Preservation Division, said she filed a report with the department's enforcement division after reading a story in the Star-Bulletin about Lee's curbstones.
McEldowney and DLNR Chairman Peter Young declined to discuss the department's inquiry, but McEldowney said she believes the curbstones have a historic value.
While it is difficult to place a monetary value on them, McEldowney said the stones are more than 50 years old and add a historical character to Honolulu streets.
The 2-by-3-foot curbstones used to line some of the older streets in Honolulu. The stones given to Lee were made of basalt, commonly known as blue rock.
McEldowney said that the blue-rock curbstones were cut from local quarries before the 1920s.
Under state law the Historic Preservation Division is responsible for reviewing city and state construction projects on historic properties. Historic objects such as curbstones are supposed to be reused, and any surplus materials are stored at the city's Sand Island yard, she said.
"We consider them a historic object," McEldowney said.
City & County of Honolulu
