Thursday, May 28, 2009

Beach Access at Ko Olina Resort Impossible

This is a guest post from well-know podcaster and Hawaii resident, Todd Cochrane. You can read his personal blog here and his business blog, Geek News Central.

photo of ko olina beachHawaii has an Open Beach Access law that provides the public access to “all” Hawaii beaches. But over the years different land owners have done their best to make it very hard for Hawaii residents to get to some of the premium beach locations.

My family and I have tried no less than 10 times over the past month to get to the public beach at the private resort, Ko Olina. In order to gain entry, you show ID to the resort gate sentry and then proceed to the highly-limited public parking area. But we have repeatedly been turned away at the gate the last two months. On Sunday, I pulled off the road from the entrance and watched as Ko Olina Resort security turned away 23 cars in a row.

Something is really amiss at Ko Olina. While I know the beach is popular, it makes me wonder if they do not have an internal policy that is meant to discourage the public from going there. You used to be able to at least "scout" the parking lot and wait in your car until someone left. But they are not even allowing this. Plus, with the number of signs warning people they will be towed if they park any place but the designated public parking spots, it shows they mean to play hard ball with locals. If they really cared about the public, they would have allocated more parking.

As a resident of Hawaii, I feel my rights are being violated and that the Ko Olina resort has some explaining to do.

Even sadder, most of the public beaches in the Kapolei area have been overrun by homeless people. Personally speaking, it's pretty sad when I do not feel it's safe to take my family to some of the other beaches in Hawaii that are not located on private resorts.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Ko Olina gets away with this because they do provide public beach access -- however, it's limited to eight parking stalls per lagoon! Guards have routinely turned back locals even when there was plenty of open "non-public" parking spaces available. Nice of 'em, eh?

When the Disney Resort opens out there, will they have more than eight parking stalls for public beach access? Anyone who goes to the beach at Ko Olina should contact their Neighborhood Board and City Council reps in that district to make sure more spaces are alloted for locals and residents! - Rich Figel (richfigel@gmail.com)

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Support Our Supporters: Gary Hooser


State Sen. Gary Hooser has personally backed our beach access efforts from the very start. On Groundhog Day 2008 (above photo) he was the only elected official to show up at our rally in front of the Capitol building. This year, he again worked with us in trying to get legislation passed that would protect shoreline access -- but other legislators chose to do nothing, as usual.

Gary has announced that he is running for Lt. Governor in the 2010 elections (click here to visit his home page) and will be holding a kick-off rally on Tues., June 9 at Ke'ehi Lagoon, DAV Hall. Although he's asking for $25 per ticket for the fundraiser, I can give you FREE tickets that he has offered to Beach Access Hawaii.

Email me at richfigel@gmail.com, if you'd like tickets. There will be food and entertainment, and Gary promises to put the "fun" back in fundraiser. As our future Lt. Governor, maybe he can help persuade the next Governor to take action on protecting our beaches and shoreline access... something our current Governor apparently doesn't think is worth her time.

For more information about Gary's campaign, go to: http://www.garyhooser.com/

FREE Bumper Stickers Available!


Just a reminder: if you'd like to get a "No More Gates!" bumper sticker to put on your vehicle, rubbish bin, beach gear or whatever, drop me an email with your snail mail address to: richfigel@gmail.com

Donations are still needed to keep our group going, however, so if you can spare $5 to $10, please make a small contribution using our Paypal link on the right hand side of the page. But if you can't swing it right now, no problem -- we'll send you as many bumper stickers as you want, anyway. What goes around, comes around, right?

Mahalo for your support!