On Politics: Rail’s Civic Center terminus: temporary or permanent?

Showing remarkable optimism, city officials are calling the next phase of the much-troubled transit system the “HART 2022 Recovery Plan.”

A recovery means a return “to a normal sense of health or strength.” But, of course the city’s estimated $10 billion transit plan is not returning to normality; it is admitting that its initially proposed plans to build a 20-mile system all the way to Ala Moana Center were too optimistic.

The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation timeline says we are about to begin an important and perhaps final next phase.

Although the city decided to temporarily stop construction once it reaches the Civic Center Station because there really are not the funds needed to continue for now, two more stations are still on the overall route plans.

This Civic Center terminus for the near future, according to HART plans, is known by its Hawaiian name as Ka‘akaukukui. Or if you dropped the flourishes or the special title, you could call it Station 19.

The HART web page describes Ka‘akaukukui as meaning “the north or right light.” Or you can also say it is the intersection of Halekauwila Street and South Street. There’s a Servco baseyard and a new condo there. An exhaustive historic survey of the area paid for by HART couldn’t find much that was remarkable on the site.

It is near the beginnings of Fort Street, which the survey said is where Hawaii’s first paved streets were built around 1881.

There are three parks in this section of downtown Honolulu: Mother Waldron, Irwin and Walker. Mother Waldron was one of Honolulu’s most widely-known friends of the poor, described with “civilizing” youth gangs through her playground work. Called by historian Robert Dye as “part saint and part cop” she was a Pohukaina Elementary School fourth-grade teacher, who lived in the Kakaako area from 1912 to 1934.

Irwin Park, completed in 1934, is now actually a parking lot at the foot of Aloha Tower — but the park was envisioned as a garden gateway to Honolulu for transoceanic passengers arriving by ship.

Walker Park is a tiny triangle created by the realignment of Nimitz Highway sitting at the base of the building first known as the Amfac Financial Center. The park was named in honor of former Amfac Inc. executive Henry Alexander Walker, Sr. in 1972.

The area is a solid historic neighborhood, embracing gritty and gleaming Kakaako — and may well end up as the end of the line for Honolulu’s adventure with mass transit.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.