Mayor again asks state to manage Haiku Stairs

"No" is the expected reply to the final offer on the troubled trail

Mayor Mufi Hannemann is asking the state, for the second time since he took office, to take Haiku Stairs off the city's hands.

The state's response to Hannemann's Sept. 11 letter to Gov. Linda Lingle hasn't been sent yet, but it's going to be the same answer as last year, said Peter Young, director of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources: "No."

The situation leaves in limbo the future of the historic, 3,922-step metal staircase scaling the Koolau Mountains to a breathtaking view.

Former Mayor Jeremy Harris' administration spent $1.2 million to repair the stairs in 2002. But a lack of public access to the base of the stairs has kept them closed since then.

Proponents of the "Stairway to Heaven," including the nonprofit group Friends of Haiku Stairs, consider it a historic landmark and a unique hiking opportunity that should be available to the public. The group has offered to manage the stairs for the city or state. Detractors want the stairs torn out to remove the temptation to trespass on private land to access the route. Some residents of the Kaneohe neighborhood nearest the stairs were angered by people trying to sneak onto the stairs through their yards.

Since then, the city has spent $1,500 a week on security guards to keep climbers away, said Councilwoman Barbara Marshall, whose district includes the stairs.

"My administration has concluded that the city does not have the requisite experience or expertise to operate and manage a nature hiking trail," Hannemann wrote in his recent letter to Lingle.

He goes on to suggest, as he did in an April 2005 letter, that the DLNR's Na Ala Hele trails and access program would be well-suited to the task.

Hannemann doesn't say what the city will do with the stairs if the state won't take them, but does call his letter "a last offer" before the city decides their fate.

The mayor won't comment on the state's response until he has received the governor's reply, city spokesman Bill Brennan said yesterday.

"Neither the county nor the state really have resources in place to manage the metal stairway," said Curt Cottrell, manager of the state trails program. Cottrell called the stairs "a really good community asset," but his staff of 11 has its hands full managing 275 miles of dirt trails around the state.

"It would absolutely choke my program. ... We're simple trail managers. We weed-whack. We dig dirt," Cottrell said.

Beyond liability questions and how to get people to the base of the stairs, which is owned by the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, there are many management questions, Cottrell said. Among them: "How many people do you handle? How do you turn them away? How to you get them to parking?"

Pre-Hannemann attempts by the city to get access to the base of the stairs via a church parking lot, the H-3 access road, Windward Community College and Hawaiian Home Lands all fell through.