Mayor wants $5 million
for nature park

By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Star-Bulletin

Mayor Jeremy Harris wants $5 million to purchase 94.7 acres for a nature park in Aina Haina on property once slated for a cemetery.

But City Council Budget Chairman John Henry Felix, who represents Aina Haina, said he's not sure he'll endorse the plan.

The proposal is part of a $6.4 supplementary budget request being made by the Harris administration to the city's construction program for the year.

Also being sought are $990,000 for added costs associated with the Chinatown police substation, and an extra $350,000 to replace a hazardous-materials truck for the Honolulu Fire Department.

City appraisers have estimated the value of the Aina Haina property at $5 million.

The National Housing Corp. of Hawaii purchased it for $9.5 million.

"We support the idea of keeping (the property) as open space and as a nature park," Managing Director Ben Lee said yesterday.

Felix said he finds the proposed purchase of the parcel in the back of Aina Haina interesting.

"I wanted to acquire it, but we were looking at a land exchange involving city property of equal value so we would not have any out-of-pocket expense," Felix said.

The councilman said he's looking at the purchase plan but isn't quite sold on it.

"I'm very concerned about the budget deficit," he said. "We're looking at somewhere between $100 million and $150 million, so if we can realize an equitable exchange, that would be the best of both worlds."

National Housing could not be reached for comment.

Many Aina Haina residents two years ago opposed its proposal for a cemetery on the parcel.

Felix in 1996 proposed that National Housing give the city the Aina Haina parcel as partial payment for purchase of the city's Block J property on Alakea and South Beretania streets.

National Housing associate Franco Mola is a principal for a group planning twin affordable housing towers on Block J. But the exchange, opposed by Harris, eventually was nixed.

Meanwhile, Lee said $990,000 more is needed to complete the new Chinatown substation project on North Hotel Street.

The project consists of restoring two buildings and constructing a new one on the makai half-block bounded by Maunakea, North Hotel and Smith streets.

The project had been budgeted at $2.2 million, but additional work needs to be done, Lee said, including asbestos removal from floors, the demolition of a stairway and improving the structural support system of the middle building, an early-1900s building on the historic-buildings registry.

The third item in the supplemental budget is a new hazardous-materials vehicle.

The city's only such vehicle, based at Kalihi Uka Fire Station, was destroyed following a car accident on Pali Highway in September.