Like many others I was taken aback by images of a wrecking ball obliterating the East Wing of the White House. A beloved structure reduced to rubble to be replaced by a 90,000-square-foot ballroom —almost bigger than the White House itself.
I wondered how President Donald Trump could get away with it, moving with such secrecy and speed. Werenʻt there protections in place? I also thought: This never could happen in Hawaiʻi — a cherished structure vaporized in the blink of an eye.
Or could it?
The only thing I remember being remotely similar —and it is a stretch — is when Mayor Frank Fasi in 1976 brought in two bulldozers, driving one of them himself, and a wrecking crew on a Friday morning without warning to demolish the parking lot next to Honolulu Hale.
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This was the same parking lot Fasi used himself along with all of the council members and members of the public in 70 metered stalls.
Council members were stunned and furious when they arrived at work to find their parking spaces had vanished.
Fasi was impatient with the council for blocking him from removing the parking lot to make way for a new green lawn park stretching from Honolulu Hale to Alapai Street. Fasi wanted the parking lot removed immediately, not in the distant future.
He told reporters his surprise attack on the asphalt was a tactic he learned fighting in World War II in the Pacific.
Six-time Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi in 2004. (AP/Ronen Zilberman)
“I learned as a Marine when you have an objective and you have the opportunity, you move with all that you have got, and if you have to — surprise the opposition.”
Then-council member Kekoa Kaapu, also a former Marine, was the angriest of all the city lawmakers. He shot back, “If you move in and attack and destroy half a million dollars of property and cause suffering to the public, youʻll be removed of your command,” he told the Star-Bulletin.
Kaapu called the demolition a “childish reaction” to the bill he was about to introduce to prevent the removal of the parking lot until a suitable replacement for users could be identified.
Fasi was like Trump in his belief that the speedy result outranked slogging through the legal process to get there. His campaign motto was, “Fasi gets it done.”
Building Too Fast
Clearly, Fasi ripping up the city parking lot cannnot compare in magnitude to Trump summarily tearing down part of the White House, one of the most historically important buildings in the country. The similarity is Fasi and Trumpʻs attitude: Let the rules be damned. Full speed ahead.
Before there were adequate protections in Hawaiʻi, developers tried to build hotels and retail stores over ancient Hawaiian burial sites. There was the construction of Walmart on Keʻeaumoku Street in 2004, where more than a hundred ancestral bones were discovered and hastily stuffed into a shipping container until a solution could be found for their reburial.
Or the time in 1989 when developers of the Ritz Carlton Maui in Kapalua disturbed 1,100 human remains.
Could anything like what Trump did in Washington happen here, such as a rogue politIcal leader without warning sending in heavy equipment to whack away part of the State Capitol or ʻIolani Palace?
It would actually be harder for someone to tear down a portion of ʻIolani Palace than it was for President Trump to tear down part of the White House. (David Croxford/Civil Beat/2022)
Kiersten Faulkner, executive director of Historic Hawai’i Foundation, said the destruction of a beloved public property deemed a national registered landmark would be highly unlikely without proper notice and without following legally required public review processes.
“The federal, state and local regulations are designed to provide a framework for identification and review of significant historic resources in advance of decisions and actions,” she wrote in an email to Civil Beat.
But once the required review is completed, demolition can occur, such as the sinking of the deteriorating Falls of Clyde earlier this month.
The Trump administration was able move in fast without prior permission to demolish the East Wing because the Federal Historic Preservation Act of 1966 exempts the White House from the same review process and public scrutiny required for projects at other historical buildings.
The administration interpreted the rules of the National Capital Planning Commission as not applying to demolition and site preparation but only to the actual construction plans of the ballroom, which it says it will submit later.
Out of respect for transparency and public review, other presidential administrations have submitted their plans for approval before they began demolition or any work on a project even though it was not required.
During his first term, Trump himself waited to start preliminary work on a new tennis pavilion on the White House grounds until reviews were completed.
Trump told donors at a meeting this summer he was astonished at how easy it was to move ahead with no permits to demolish the East Wing for his $300 million privately funded ballroom.
New Law Raises Concerns
Faulkner and other historic preservationists in Hawaii today are worried that a bill Gov. Josh Green signed into law in July will make it easier for developers and property owners to sidestep some of the formerly required historic protection reviews.
The “review processes themselves are being rolled back and redefined so that the regulatory framework is riddled with loopholes and exemptions. Many historical properties and cultural resources are at risk when the statute disavows their significance,” Faulkner wrote.
For sure, destruction of a famous historically registered building is still unlikely here because the exemptions Trump used are not in Hawaiʻi’s historical protection laws, but there are exemptions in the new legislation to allow developers and landowners to build without some of our former restrictions.
For example, the new law allows an exemption to the former process for areas of early Hawaiian settlement if the area has been excavated many times in the past with no significant findings. This would include development areas like Kakaʻako and Waikīkī, which already have subject to many archaeological excavations.
It is important that the public not be left out of the process of preserving its own history just as it was in Washington.
Kehaunani Abad, chair of the Oʻahu Historic Preservation Commission, and other preservations opposed this, saying that just because nothing of historical value has been uncovered yet does not mean it is not there.
“This approach runs contrary to both logic and law. A lack of existing data is not proof of absence,” Abad testified to the Legislature.
Under the new law, homeowners or developers seeking permits to renovate or build extensions on existing private single-family dwellings or town houses will be able to avoid the historic review process unless the structures are at least 50 years old and in an historic district or are nominated for or included on a state or national register.
So, the concern is not about destroying what we know is there, but what might be still hidden, especially in ancient areas where Hawaiians lived — artifacts and structures waiting to be found in the future with improved technological tools.
It is important that the public not be left out of the process of preserving its own history just as it was in Washington.
The lesson is don’t assume anyone will go out of their way to protect our past when they want to get something done.
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