Kakaako project gets OK on bones

A decision to allow reburial of native remains clears the way for Whole Foods

The developer of the Ward Village Shops in Kakaako got a green light yesterday to remove 11 sets of native Hawaiian remains to make way for a planned $150 million mixed-use development that will be anchored by a gourmet health food store.

It will still be months before General Growth Properties Inc. resumes construction, which has been stalled since June after the remains were discovered, said Dwight Yoshimura, a senior vice president with Chicago-based General Growth.

Nonetheless, yesterday's vote by the Oahu Burial Council removes a major roadblock that threatened to stymie General Growth's attempts to build a home for Whole Foods Market, the Texas-based retailer that has been trying for years to find the right location for its first Hawaii store.

The 6-3 vote came at the end of an emotionally charged four-hour meeting in which citizens and burial council members made impassioned pleas for and against moving the bones.

Known in Hawaiian as iwi, burial remains have spiritual significance in traditional native Hawaiian culture, since they are believed to contain the deceased person's mana, or spiritual life force. Because iwi can be found throughout the islands in graves that are often neither marked nor documented, the iwi are often vulnerable to disturbance by builders. The island burial councils are charged under state law with deciding how to preserve or relocate iwi discovered by developers.

Located at the corner of Auahi and Kamakee streets, General Growth's project replaces an existing building that the company demolished to make way for the new one. Upon finding the iwi, General Growth proposed moving them to a monument or vault to be located near the development. But that proposal ran into objections from people who could trace their ancestry back to Southeast Oahu and who were therefore recognized under state law as "cultural descendants" of the iwi.

Cultural descendants spoke out on both sides of the issue during yesterday's long, free-flowing meeting, which included passionate oratory in both English and Hawaiian.

Among those recognized as cultural descendants were members of the Keohokalole family, who spoke in favor of moving the bones to protect them. General Growth's contractor plans to drive some 1,200 pilings to strengthen the building's foundation. And Adrian Keohokalole, a cultural descendent, said it would be better to move the iwi than to subject them to the shocks of such extensive pile driving.

"We need to do the best job we can for them," Keohokalole said of the iwi. "The decision we make is on their behalf."

But others questioned the benefits of moving the bones.

Kaleo Paik, a member of the burial council, said what was best for the iwi depended on how one defined "safety." Paik said the spiritual damage that would be done by moving the bones would be greater than that caused by pile driving.

"The worst destruction for me would be to take them out of there," she said.

Others expressed anger over the situation, which they said presented the public and the burial councils with two bad choices. Burial Council member Kehau Abad said that 308 sets of iwi had been discovered in Honolulu between 1986 and 2002, and of those, 303 had been forced to be moved.

Although Abad said she sympathized with General Growth for the financial losses it might suffer if the iwi discovery prevented the project from moving ahead, she said the company had taken a risk by choosing to raze a building and replace it with the grand project now in the works.

By failing to adequately assess the site before moving ahead, Abad said, General Growth had left the council with "two horrific choices, neither of which we want."

"What we are saying here is that we need to be offered a different option," she said.

But General Growth's executives could not offer one.

If the bones were left in place, Yoshimura told the council, it would be difficult to avoid disturbing them, given the number of pilings that would have to be driven and the amount of plumbing, wiring and other infrastructure that have to be put in place. Trying to change the footprint of the building probably would make the project unfeasible, he said.

Yoshimura pleaded with the council to let the bones be moved and the project to go forward as planned, saying the developer had tried to do the right thing by trying to work with cultural descendants to devise a plan for the iwi.

In the end, the council granted General Growth's request.

After the meeting, Yoshimura said the next step would be to meet with cultural descendants to work out a plan for exhuming and reburying the bones. He said General Growth did not have a time frame for resuming the project or finishing it.