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Kady Pascual

Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

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WaikikiBrewingCo_Street

<title>Hawai‘i Scene on Social: The guest trap</title>

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Hawai‘i Scene on Social: The guest trap

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De Soto 2025

DeSoto Brown

Hawai‘i History

Columnists

Here’s Bishop Street, once the home of every major Hawaiian corporation in Downtown Honolulu, in a pair of then and now views from 1949 and today.

It should be a surprise to no one that many of the structures today in this location are considerably taller than the ones seen in the older photo. You can easily see that the Diamond Head side of Bishop Street in 1949, moving mauka from the second building back, formerly held the T. H. Davies building, the Bank of Bishop & Co. (today’s First Hawaiian) and the Alexander Young Hotel. None are standing today, having been replaced by high-rises.

But more interesting than these obvious newer buildings are some things that most people will not notice at all, but which are much more noteworthy. Can you guess what they could be?

If not, here’s the answer — the coconut palms. Specifically it’s the ones on both sides of the street closest to this viewpoint from Nimitz Highway. The oldest of these trees date from when the two remaining business headquarters still standing today were constructed on these two lowest blocks of Bishop Street: Alexander & Baldwin (visible on the left in the second block in 1949) and the Dillingham Transportation Building (on the right).

These coconuts were planted here by a young landscape architect who was making a name for himself nearly 100 years ago in Honolulu, Richard Tongg. A local boy of Chinese ancestry, Tongg had graduated from the University of Hawai‘i in 1923, spent about five years studying and working in California, then returned home to begin his career in 1929. He seems to have started off very successfully, quickly finding private clients with large homes as well as working on UH Mānoa’s campus and the grounds of the new Honolulu Hale.

Tongg was a fan of coconut palms and their gracefully curving trunks, and he attracted much attention by installing 10 fully grown ones in front of the new and as yet unopened Alexander & Baldwin building on Sunday, August 25, 1929. Passers-by marveled at the sudden appearance of these mature trees (where there’d been no vegetation at all) when the work week began as usual the next day. This was the first time that mature palms had been transplanted this way in Hawai‘i. Tongg must have known — along with the specialist who did the moving and planting, Henry Danner — that unlike woody trees that form major tap roots that can make transplanting difficult or impossible, palms only grow a large ball of countless small roots that can easily be dug up and will successfully regrow from being significantly pruned back.

The success of A&B’s landscaping in such a prominent location led to coconuts similarly being planted by Tongg in the next block makai, along the edge of a parking lot for the American Factors (Amfac) building, in July 1930.

The last of Bishop Street’s distinguished corporate structures, the Dillingham Transportation Building, was also graced by mature palms by Richard Tongg in time for its opening in September 1930. Tongg’s three landscaping jobs in these blocks, all of which incorporated coconut trees, gave Bishop Street a notably tropical ambience that many onlookers appreciated for obviously placing this impressive American-style business vista in its unique Hawaiian setting.

Now that you know the history of the palms that you can see in the current-day picture of Bishop Street, give them some good thoughts for their venerable ages. By now, the most aged trees here are over a century old (amazingly), since they were already 5 to 10 years of age when they were planted here nearly 100 years ago. Their great heights are evidence of their impressive lifespans. Let’s acknowledge the existences they’ve had in the heart of downtown Honolulu in spite of the unwarranted indifference most of us show them.

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Bishop St 49

<title>Then & Now on Bishop Street: Buildings and Trees Grow Taller</title>

DeSoto Brown, historian and curator for the Archives at Bishop Museum, joins ASD as a history columnist. In this debut, he shows us Bishop Street in Downtown Honolulu, as it was in 1949 and as it appears today, with the backstory on what you're seeing. Something on this street is older than you might guess. What do you think that might be?

Then & Now on Bishop Street: Buildings and Trees Grow Taller

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Government & Politics

The Honolulu Ethics Commission recently interviewed candidates for a job without putting the interviews on camera, and for this it is being scolded. The complaint is that the public could not watch.

The critics prize transparency, and they are not wrong to prize it. Decisions made on the public’s behalf should be made where the public can see them. But transparency is one good among several. 

Goods have a way of crowding one another out. A reasonable person can desire two goods at once and feel the tension. The difficulty begins when someone decides his favorite good is the only one worth having.

Obsession, on its own, is harmless. The man who loves stamps cannot seize the Postal Service and reprint his favorites. The man who loves old coins cannot take over the Mint and bring back the penny.

A billionaire is another matter. He can endow a stable of nonprofits and ride his hobbyhorse into policy. George Soros has done so on the Mainland, and Pierre Omidyar has done so here. 

The rich have always had a heavier hand in politics than the rest of us, for good reason. They have interests worth defending and the means to defend them. They usually believe they grasp the public good better than the public does. Outsized success is good for the pocketbook and bad for the ego.

Our system assumes interests will compete. Government sits in the middle as a sort of referee. Governing well means admitting you cannot give every side all it wants. The trouble comes when the contest is lopsided. One cause is pressed by well-funded and tireless advocates, with no one of equal weight pushing back.

Transparency is exactly that kind of cause. It sounds good, it is good, and you will search a long while before finding an anti-transparency nonprofit. So a question rarely gets asked aloud. What happens when transparency is carried all the way to its limit, with nothing left to weigh against it? Not results, not speed, not whether anyone competent still wants the job.

In Hawaiʻi we are finding out. Honolulu Civil Beat and the Public First Law Center have long worked to make public boards hire in the open. Both nonprofits are housed within Pierre and Pam 

. The law center brings the lawsuits. The newsroom supplies the coverage. When one donor funds both the campaign and the reporting on it, the public debate has a single chair at the table.

 is Honolulu’s Ethics Commission, faulted for interviewing candidates outside a live, broadcast meeting.

Carry transparency to the limit and it runs into another good. Nobody campaigns for that good, because it has no slogan. It is the willingness of decent people to serve at all.

Picture the interview from the candidate’s side. The salary is a third less than the private sector would pay her. Her tenure is uncertain. A new mayor or somebody else’s scandal could end it within the year. Before she begins work, she must publish her debts, her holdings, and her investments for anyone to read. The press will sift each decision she makes for a usable headline. She and her family can expect threats now and then.

And then the last condition: the job interview will be filmed and archived, whether or not she is hired. During testimony time, any stranger may take three minutes to say whatever he likes about her while she sits silent. And any serious hire involves frank questions from board members. These will be answered on a permanent, public record.

Civil Beat has opined that financial disclosure 

 public service. And recording interviews may not deter qualified candidates from applying either. Perhaps. But Hawaiʻi is not suffering a surplus of able, honest people elbowing one another aside to lead it. The shortage runs the other way.

Corruption is real, and the Omidyar network is right to hate it. But the corruption is not in the process. It is in us. Daylight exposes the rot, but it cannot reach far enough in to heal it.

The men who built the American system knew this. John Adams said it was “made only for a moral and religious people” and is “wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” They leaned on Christian religion not as decoration but because it claimed to do what no statute can: reach into a man’s heart and change what he loves.

Corruption is not Hawaiʻi’s only problem, and transparency is not Hawaiʻi’s only need. The family that can’t make rent is not waiting on a cleaner hiring process. It is waiting on a government able to do something about the cost of living. Big problems yield only to capable people who can act—and act quickly.

Full transparency, carried to the limit, works against both effective action and speed. It turns many of the most capable away at the door. The ones who stay must decide at the pace of public meetings. All the while, the trouble they were hired to fix keeps piling up.

The ones demanding total exposure rarely bear this burden. The law center’s director is paid around 

. Mr. Omidyar is a billionaire many times over. They will be fine whatever becomes of the state.

Nobody recorded their hiring process, but I would guess they feel they are doing good work on behalf of the public, transparency or no. The public has few ways to give them feedback. It can only grant or withhold donations and page views.

A government with nothing to hide and nowhere to hide it would be a glass house—splendid from the street, and very hard to live in at noon. The sun comes straight through the walls, and there is no corner cool enough to think in.

The remedy is not to brick the walls back up. We still want to see who is inside and what they are doing.

The remedy is windows and shades — daylight where it serves the public, shade where exposure would do nothing but drive good people off the lot. Public First 

 “open government is essential to a healthy democracy.” The larger truth is that good government is essential. And good government means holding many goods in proper balance.

Transparency belongs among other goods. It was never meant to stand alone.

sunshine blinds I Stock 1174179196

<title>Too much sunshine</title>

Transparency is great, but it isn't the only value government has to weigh, writes ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa. There's so much sunshine on some commission hiring that good applicants might shy away for fear of getting needlessly burned.

Too much sunshine

Stephanie Salmons Headshot

Stephanie Salmons

Real Estate

A new affordable housing project in Makiki is set to welcome its first residents.

A crowd gathered Saturday for the grand opening of the Makiki Banyan, located at 1568 Pensacola St.

It brings 80 one-bedroom and 10 two-bedroom units to the neighborhood, available to households earning up to 80% of the area median income. While income limits depend on household sizes, 80% AMI for a one-person household is $86,240 and for a family of two is $98,560, according to 

[{"type":"text","text":"Construction began in March 2025 and was completed in 13.5 months."}]

, itself led by Paul Lam, and co-developers Geena Thielen and Evan Amakata, under the City and County of Honolulu's 

Bill 7 was adopted by the Honolulu City Council in 2019; these projects are also referred to as ROH Chapter 32 projects. According to the city's 

, ROH Chapter 32 relaxes development standards and offers financial incentives for affordable rental projects in certain zoning districts and on lots no larger than 20,000 square feet as long as 80% of the units are rented to those earning no more than 100% of Honolulu's AMI for at least 15 years.

Makiki Banyan is the fifth affordable and workforce housing project that Lam Capital has so far developed under Bill 7. According to

 a recent announcement from the developer, previous projects include developments on Ernest, Kīna‘u and Algaroba streets and University Avenue.

The company has another 750 units in the pipeline across 12 projects in various stages of development, the announcement noted.

"We acquired the first parcel four years ago and we acquired the second parcel three years ago, so it's been a four-year project. We're just absolutely thrilled," Lam told Aloha State Daily on Saturday, when asked how it felt to see the project finished. "Rental housing is what we need as a community. So many people can't afford to buy."

Lam says he would "absolutely not" be able to do this kind of development without Bill 7.

"This is the piece of legislation that ... can help to solve infill urban housing needs."

Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi told ASD Saturday that Makiki Banyan was the "execution of a concept done very, very well."

"The thing about a Bill 7 project like this is not only does it allow 90 families eventually to move in here at really good rates, it's where it's located and all the things that come with it," he says. "... The compounded value beyond the low rent is this location. [To] be able to live in an urban area with bus stops, walking distance to schools, to shopping centers, all those conveniences that just add to the quality of life. Not the least of which is they built a beautiful building where people could feel proud about living in a place that has great street appeal."

Davis Pitner, spokesperson for the city's Department of Planning and Permitting, told ASD in an email that eight Bill 7 projects have so far been completed, with certificates of occupancy issued. These projects have added 250 affordable housing units to O‘ahu's housing stock.

Meanwhile another 52 Bill 7 projects are in the pipeline, which Pitner says could create about 1,540 affordable housing units.

Currently, 31 of those projects are under review with the applicant; five are under review with the city and DPP, one project has been approved; and 15 are under construction with building permits issued, he told ASD.

For rental information or questions about leasing, contact 

Makiki banyan 051626

<title>Affordable housing development opens in Makiki</title>

Makiki Banyan is the fifth project from Lam Capital developed under the City and County of Honolulu's Bill 7 program.

Affordable housing development opens in Makiki

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

 in late December that its Kakaʻako store on Cooke Street was closed and the business was moving.

Its new location isn’t far — the business is reopening tomorrow, Jan. 8, on Ala Moana Boulevard in the former space of Valyou Hawaiʻi.

Starting tomorrow, the store will be open daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. This is the business’s largest location, according to manager Cecilia Yang. Its other stores are located in Pearl Kai Shopping Center and in Waipahu.

You can find all your favorite snacks, ranging from Kit-Kats to chips and drinks. Newer snacks can be found near the store entrance.

Since the shelves are organized by category — chips, candies, noodles and more — it’s easier to shop. The business recently brought in more drinks, especially teas, according to Yang.

Like its other locations, the store isn’t limited to snacks. Customers can find sauces and a variety of cooking products, as well as home goods.

Customer parking is currently available on the side of the store, and additional parking will eventually be available in the lot behind the store.

Stay tuned for the store’s grand opening celebration. 1-2 Buy Hawaiʻi will also be doing special promotions for the upcoming Lunar New Year.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: The guest trap

Kady Pascual

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Hawai‘i Scene on Social: The guest trap

Authors

Kady Pascual

Social Media Editor

More in Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

Hawai‘i Scene on Social meets Hawai‘i Skies

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Neighborhood weather updates

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Island vibes

Gotta catch ‘em all — at Ala Moana Center: voices from Pokémon GO’s “Wild Area: Global” event

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