Navy to end deal with vendors at memorial
The Navy will void its contract with the private food and retail vendors who operate a much-maligned concessionaire under a large tent near the USS Arizona Memorial Visitor Center.
The private business began more than a year ago and was immediately attacked by Pearl Harbor survivors, veterans and island politicians as a tacky, carnival-like setup too close to what they consider a sacred memorial to those killed on Dec. 7, 1941.
Navy officials have decided that on May 1, 2007, management of the 6.4 acres at Halawa Landing will be transferred to the National Park Service, which operates the memorial, Pearl Harbor spokeswoman Agnes Tauyan said last night.
The current commercial operation is run by Patrick Brent, chairman of the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center business. He could not be reached for comment.
Tauyan said the area will become an integral part of the new Arizona Memorial Center being planned by the National Park Service and the Arizona Memorial Museum Association.
She said it will become "a consolidated entry gateway and orientation center for all the historic museums, including the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park, the Battleship Missouri Memorial and the Pacific Aviation Museum," which is expected to open on Ford Island on Dec. 7, the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
More than 1.5 million people visit the memorials annually.
Mathew Sgan, senior vice president for development for the Pearl Harbor Memorial Fund, has estimated that it will take $34 million to build a new "gateway."
Designed more than two decades ago to accommodate 2,400 visitors a day, the Arizona visitor center now receives twice that amount. It is sagging under that burden and slowing sinking.
Brent had been subleasing the Halawa Landing site from Ford Island Ventures, which won the 65-year lease in 2003 as part of its $84 million plan to redevelop Ford Island.
What bothered many veterans and memorial visitors was a 5,000-square-foot white tent that Brent said was supposed to be temporary until a permanent visitor center with a restaurant was built.
