Honolulu City Councilman Breene Harimoto (District 8, which includes Pearl City & Aiea) recently made a site check at the newly paved, sixty stall parking lot that is adjacent to the Newtown Baseball Field located on Kaahele Street near the entrance to the Newtown Recreation Center in Aiea.
Councilman Harimoto played an instrumental role in working a deal to have the city owned land paved over "at no cost to the city" and made into a parking by local contractor Coluccio who was doing sewer work in the area and using the city parcel as a staging area for construction.
"This was a city park land that was just unused, overgrown and never been used," said Harimoto. "We realized that this would make a nice parking lot. Coluccio was the contractor doing the sewer work down below and he used this for a staging area. He saved a lot of money by using city land as his staging area for construction. We thought we would ask him when he was done if he would pave this over for us and he said sure."
The trade between the city and Coluccio delivered a first class, well constructed, safe parking lot that will directly benefit park users. Again, the deal was at no cost to the city.
"Yes, it was at no cost to the city," Harimoto said. "The contractor Coluccio donated parking pavement and the city gave a big parking lot for the park. Instead of having the park user’s park out on the street, which is really dangerous, they can park in the parking lot. The only glitch was that the driveway here belongs to Newtown. The city had to get a memorandum of agreement so that we could use their driveway to access this parking lot. They just signed off on it. So now, the city has to formally accept the gift from Coluccio. That will go to the City Council. When that happens we can open. Officially its park property for park users. It’s just a real good win, win situation where the timing was right and we asked and they said sure."
Photo by Barry Villamil | [email protected]
(From left to right) State Senator David Ige (Pearl City/Aiea)), City Councilman Breene Harimoto and State Representative K. Mark Takai (Pearl City/Aiea) pictured standing on the recently paved Newtown Field parking lot located on Kaahele Street near the entrance to the Newtown Recreation Center in Aiea on Thursday, June 14, 2012.