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Unbeknownst to many people and despite some expressed community concerns, the Hawaii Community Development Authority (HCDA) signed a 35-year lease with Howard Hughes Development Company in June of last year that hands over management and operations of the state-owned harbor at Kewalo Basin to the Texas-based developer. Hughes, a $4.7 billion company, has said it will spend up to $20 million refurbishing the facility, and HCDA can expect $14 million in rent over the term of the lease. (Apparently unhappy with the name, the developer has already re-branded the old place as “K”.)

The agreement was ballyhooed in media reports as another great example of a public-private partnership: “Big changes are in store for Kewalo Basin, but taxpayers won’t pay a single dime!” burbled KITV News.

It’s hardly coincidental that, directly mauka of the boat basin across Ala Moana Boulevard, Hughes has plans, also approved last year by the HCDA, to build two luxury condo towers as part of its massive, 60-acre, 22-tower “Ward Village” project. Called Gateway Towers, the twin condo buildings are being drawn up by New York-based starchitects Richard Meier and Partners, a firm well known for its modernist museums and luxury residential buildings. Gleaming white in renderings, the towers will rise on the site of the soon-to-be-demolished Ward Warehouse retail complex.

Now Hughes wants more. Having bought the right to fix up the basin, on July 9 of this year Hughes presented its “” proposal to lease and redevelop the three key commercial parcels on what are known as “fast lands” within Kewalo Basin. At the same public meeting, Kewalo Waterfront Partners, a Japanese hui, presented its competing plan to develop just the former McWayne Marine site, located between the basin and Ala Moana Beach Park, into a hulking, multi-level mall on top of a parking lot with everything in it but the kitchen sink. That plan would seem to be a non-starter.

This leaves HCDA (and us) with Hughes’ more-or-less low-rise plan. Major features include a retail-heavy “urban fishing village” with underground parking on the McWayne site; enhanced parking, visibility and access, plus new retail, along the long, narrow strip between the main dock and Ala Moana Boulevard; and a restaurant, more retail, and a new C&C lifeguard office with underground parking on a spectacular waterfront site, formerly a NOAA complex, just beyond Kewalo Basin Park at the far, Ewa end of the breakwater.

A key aspect of the plan, if only suggested in the drawings, is that a new, mid-block, pedestrian crossing should be built across Ala Moana Boulevard that connects Hughes’ planned park-like “village green” between the two Gateway towers to the middle of the basin’s main dock area. If the crosswalk is built, Kewalo will become Hughes’ de facto waterfront front yard.

Retaking the Harbor

In late July, following the July 9 HCDA hearing at which organized community opposition to the privatization and commercialization of Kewalo led by the was quite evident, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser ran a “Rearview Mirror” column by HPU marketing professor Bob Sigall titled, “Kewalo Basin’s rich history resonates with Ward Village.”

The column, which must have been deeply satisfying to Hughes’ crack public-relations team, began with a historical note relating how Kewalo Basin was part of the old Ward family estate until 1913, when the scrappy cove, a haven for beachcombers and the indigent, was condemned by the Territory of Hawaii. The condemnation price, “a paltry $1,200.” Now, though, Hughes’ Ward Village project “has retaken the harbor,” Sigall wrote.

Delving into Kewalo’s Hawaiian past, the columnist quoted Hughes senior development director Race Randle, who explained how Kewalo worked: “This area in pre-contact times sustained life through fishing,” Randle said. “Hawaiian legend talks about a father and son who landed at Kewalo and taught sustainable fishing techniques and systems.

“That history really inspired us. We thought it would be great to connect this place back to that history, and back to its importance in fishing and navigation. … we see it as becoming Honolulu’s gathering place on the ocean.”

Big renderings of Hughes’ fanciful vision for Ward Village and Kewalo Basin are everywhere. In bright blues and greens, the panoramic advertisements show an inviting makai vista — across a bridged wetland, through a screen of coconut trees, and out to a serene boat basin, where small white pleasure craft line up at small white docks.

Filling in Randle’s vague history with some small-kid-time memories, Sigall waxed about the colorful old days at Kewalo Basin, with its long-gone sampan tuna-fishing fleets, its charter sport-fishing fleet, the old Hawaiian Tuna Packers processing plant and, yes, the recently demolished Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant. He concluded the puff piece by quoting Randle again: “When we saw something not well taken care of, that needed improvement, and we had the ability to make those improvements, it became our kuleana to take it on.”

Sigall and Randle’s history leaves out Kewalo’s ancient and dark past as a place where the kauwa (untouchables) were drowned before being taken to a heiau on the slopes of Punchbowl as sacrificial offerings. In the early 20th century, Kewalo was known as “Squattersville,” where an untold number of poor, mostly Hawaiian families lived on or near the unimproved public shore, rent-free, in simple shacks, according to UH professor Donald Johnson’s 1991 history of Honolulu. The squatters were organized: Their advocates, some quite prominent, requested utility lines to service the neighborhood. The Honolulu Board of Supervisors promised to extend a water line. By 1925, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin whined that the settlement had spread into Ala Moana.

Finally, after the territory began dredging and construction of a 900-foot wharf to ease overcrowding at Honolulu Harbor, the settlement dispersed mauka, up behind Punchbowl, Johnson reported. The displacement mirrors what’s going on today with the homeless sweeps of adjacent Kakaako Makai. It’s downright eerie.

A Fanciful Vision

Big renderings of Hughes’ fanciful vision for Ward Village and Kewalo Basin are everywhere. One of them wraps the glass elevator shaft at a Kahala Mall parking lot, just outside the Whole Foods/Starbucks mall entrance. You may have seen it.

In bright blues and greens, the panoramic advertisement shows an inviting makai vista — across a bridged wetland, through a screen of coconut trees, and out to a serene boat basin, where small white pleasure craft line up at small white docks. (A promotional photo on the Hughes website features a big white mega-yacht.) Farther out, beyond two sleek and landscaped breakwaters, on a waveless sea, white sailboats float. It looks like a yacht club or St. Tropez. No sampans, no flying-bridge charter boats, no dinner catamarans.

In the middle ground, five scattered cars signal Ala Moana Boulevard, which looks more like a lane. Dozens of human figures complete the tableau, frozen in mid-bliss. Rising unobtrusively along the Ewa edge of the panorama, a stack of glassy lanai — one of the Gateway condo towers — tells the story.

Is this how we see the future of Honolulu? Is this our radical fate — mega-yachts and homeless sweeps? The profits developers like Hughes are making by hoodwinking the public and insinuating themselves with our political and union leaders are staggering. It has been reported that Hughes made $66 million off of one vault-like condo tower-in-a-parking-lot, One Ala Moana. Now they’re going after our public resources. What’s next, a public-private partnership to “clean up” Ala Moana Beach Park? Oh, yeah — Mayor Kirk Caldwell already tried that and got slapped down big time. Know what’s going on around you, get involved, show up, and vote.

Based on the public comments and projected infrastructure costs to support the applicants’ ambitious plans, HCDA recently asked Hughes and Kewalo Waterfront Partners to revise and resubmit them as “best and final offers.” To date, neither party has submitted new plans. HCDA expects to receive them by the end of the month, after which there will be another round of public hearings.