A third Hawai‘i court is now involved in the complexifying legal battle to save the Ha‘ikū Stairs from demolition.
The Friends of Ha‘ikū Stairs, a nonprofit group advocating for the preservation of the historic staircase, filed a lawsuit in June challenging the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ approval of a plan to demolish the stairs.
That lawsuit, filed in Honolulu Circuit Court, is the Friends of Ha‘ikū Stairs’ third active case challenging the city. Another case from 2024 is still pending in Circuit Court, while a 2023 case is pending in the Intermediate Court of Appeals.
As of Thursday, the most recent case was remanded to the Hawai‘i Environmental Court for jurisdictional reasons, splitting the defense of the stairs across three separate courts.
Timothy Vandeveer, attorney representing the Friends of Ha‘ikū Stairs, told Aloha State Daily that no demolition can happen until the 2023 appeal is resolved, thanks to an injunction granted by the Intermediate Court of Appeals.
“That injunction is very hard to get,” Vandeveer said, explaining that the ICA only grants such orders if the plaintiff seems to have a high chance of successfully winning their case.
The three lawsuits all concern in some way a 2019 environmental impact statement by the Honolulu Board of Water Supply, which was at the time the stairs’ owner. The BWS had resolved to demolish the stairs and had consequently drafted the impact statement to determine the environmental effects of doing so.
Ultimately, however, the stairs were not demolished but were transferred to the Honolulu Parks and Recreation Department in 2020, with plans for the stairs to reopen to the public in some capacity — they are currently closed to all public use. The Friends of Ha‘ikū Stairs at the time took this decision as an indication that plans to demolish the stairs had been dropped.
But when the new County administration took over in 2021, talk of demolishing the steps was renewed, and the City Council voted in a non-binding resolution urging their destruction in order to prevent hikers trespassing and potentially being injured or stranded on the mountain.
As plans to demolish the stairs once again escalated, the City and County invoked the 2019 BWS environmental impact statement to satisfy the requirement for environmental analysis.
This became the crux of the 2024 lawsuit, which argued that the BWS impact statement was outdated and that a new analysis was necessary.
For example, the statement does not consider the historical significance of Omega Station, the decommissioned radio station at the summit of the stairs, because in 2019 it had not yet reached the 50-year threshold for consideration as a historic property. Because the station is now more than 50 years old — while it began as a radio station during WWII, the station was decommissioned following the war and was refitted in the 1970s as a Coast Guard station — it is now eligible for historic preservation, and the suit argues that should be reflected in any impact statement.
“It’s absolutely a historic site,” Vandeveer said. “That place helped us win World War II.”
At the same time, the State Historic Preservation Division concurred with the demolition plans, which became a core issue for the 2023 lawsuit. The suit argues that SHPD’s agreement was based on incomplete data: for example, SHPD had not been informed of a 1999 historic preservation covenant protecting the stairs, which the suit argues makes the division’s concurrence invalid.
And the latest suit argues the SHPD’s decision to agree with demolition conflicts with its own stance in 2019, when the division advocated for the stairs’ preservation. The suit accuses the City of “flip-flopping,” abruptly changing course without any explanation or due process.
“I find it very questionable coordination between the City and the state on this,” Vandeveer said. “This shouldn’t be a political issue. It’s really a failure of imagination on the part of the government.”
The BWS, Council and SHPD have all cited safety concerns as their reasons for demolishing the stairs, with the Council resolution claiming that there were 160 calls for emergency services relating the stairs in 2017.
But Vandeveer said those concerns don’t bear out.
“It’s the only hike in the world with a handrail,” Vandeveer said.
The Friends of Ha‘ikū Stairs have repeatedly argued that there have been no reported injuries or deaths associated with the stairs, and that, because people are going to attempt to climb the picturesque Ko‘olau Mountains anyway, stairs or no stairs, keeping a safe route where emergency services can stage responses is safer than demolishing the easiest way to descend the slope.
In any event, with the injunction in place, the stairs are likely to remain in place for awhile longer at least: no court dates are currently scheduled for any of the three cases.
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