Center gets $1.8 mil
The Japanese Cultural Center will
bear the Weinberg name following
a donation that nearly clears its debt
The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation has given $1.8 million to the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii, getting the center closer than it has been in recent years to reaching its funding goal.
The donation has played a great part in saving the center, said board member Walter Tagawa. "We are very close, very close," he said.
The center, at 2454 South Beretania St., needed to raise $9 million to get rid of debts and prepare for the future. Individual donors came up with enough to clear bank debts and ward off foreclosure on the property, about $6 million, and banks forgave $1.5 million in interest.
When that deal was announced late last year, the center still owed $1.5 million to other creditors. The Weinberg announcement takes care of almost all of that, leaving less than $100,000 to be raised by the June 30 target date.
In return for the donation, the center will rename its main building, on the Diamond Head side of its property, the Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Community Building.
The center houses a collection of historic artifacts from Japanese immigrants, a tea ceremony room, a martial arts dojo, a banquet hall and commercial office space.
Harry Weinberg, who came to Hawaii in the 1950s and took over the Honolulu bus system, then called Honolulu Rapid Transit Ltd., became a major stockholder in several Hawaii-based public companies. He died in 1990.
The foundation has donated large amounts of money to nonprofit such as the YMCA, usually with a requirement that buildings erected from those donations carry the Weinberg name. So far there are nearly 90 "Harry and Jeanette Weinberg" buildings statewide.