This article from the Next Cities website, tells the story of Honoluluʻs buried lost streams and how they are being brought back to life on the surface of our islands. Several of these lost streams once ran right through the area of our campus.
On a characteristically sunny day in January 2014, Race Randle and a team of architects walked from the Honolulu office of Howard Hughes Corporation to a parking lot near the center of the Ward Village, the real estate development company’s 60-acre master-planned community in Kakaako, close to downtown. Randle, a senior director of development at Howard Hughes, wasn’t sure what they were looking for, only that, according to a 1928 map of the area, a curious easement ran through the property, from Kapiolani Boulevard all the way to the shoreline.
“It was odd because Victoria Ward owns the property, and there was an easement in favor of Victoria Ward, which isn’t that common,” Randle says. After a few minutes of speculation, he says, “we just walked out there to see what the heck it was.”
When they reached the location marked on the map, they found what appeared to be a sidewalk, running between a Sports Authority and Marukai Market Place, a Japanese grocery. They followed the concrete path until they saw a manhole cover. Randle lifted it. About 3 feet below was water. Not stormwater or sewage, but a stream, clean and crystal clear, pocked by small fish, flowing south toward Kewalo Basin just a few hundred yards away.
