Rail Could Force Out Church, Homes After 50 Years in Pearl City
PEARL CITY — Pastor Nemesio T. Arizabal runs services for about 50 parishioners on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights at a small, tucked-away church in Pearl City.
With little more than a wooden sign on the road announcing its presence and a graveyard of broken-down cars shielding it from view, Alpha and Omega International Christian Ministries Inc. is easy to miss.
Arizabal, a soft-spoken man whose speech is peppered with pidgin, said his uncle started the church in 1962 and passed it along to Arizabal when he died. But after nearly half a century at the same location, Alpha and Omega is poised to look for a new home now that the Honolulu rail project is moving forward with plans to acquire the church’s property and convert the surrounding area near where Kamehameha Highway merges with the H-1 and H-2 freeways into a 17-acre park-and-ride facility.
“We like this place very much,” Arizabal told Civil Beat.
On a recent Friday, Arizabal stood atop a ladder trying to take down a banner sign for another church that used to share his church’s space. He asked not to be photographed because he said the neon green tank-top he was wearing was not befitting a pastor. United Samoan Pentecostal Church of God used to share the space at 96-171 Kamehameha Highway with Alpha and Omega but abandoned the site after they found out about two years ago that the rail project would force the church to move. City surveys started two weeks ago, Arizabal said, pointing to a pair of wooden pegs in the ground with pink flags.
Arizabal said city officials promised him his parish be relocated to another church. “We are praying that it’s God’s will that it’s OK.”
Just down the road from the church sit a row of houses. Sam Alipio answered the door at one of them, buttoning up his shirt. He said that he and his family have been at the location for 50 years. A son, daughter, niece, nephew and sister live in the six houses that sit on this one-acre “family plot,” Alipio said.
“This is my life. It’s an old home but it’s comfortable here and my family is here. … It’s not going to be the same once they dislodge us from here,” he said. “It’s strange and a little sad. … If they do (take it), that’s up to them. I’m not going to fight them for it. The county has the upper hand.”
Alipio said he’s not sure that the city has the money to finish the project, though it might go through if current Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann becomes governor. He said he hopes the opponents somehow stop it so that he can stay where he’s spent most of his life.
Arizabal’s church and Alipio’s home are just two of nearly 90 homes and businesses that will be displaced by the rail, according to the Final Environmental Impact Statement, released last week. The city will need to acquire at least part of 199 different parcels for the rail’s right-of-way.
