Some Hilo residents have reservations about plans to develop land around the former Hilo Memorial Hospital.
The site of the old hospital is a 25-acre parcel located at 34 Rainbow Drive, off of Waianuenue Avenue east of the Hilo Medical Center. While the hospital and its related facilities occupy about five acres of the property, the remainder is undeveloped, but about 10 acres have been deemed developable.
Hawaii County has held two community meetings to collect public feedback about how to develop those 10 acres. The most recent meeting, an open house held on Thursday, showed a strong community preference for the development of affordable housing that includes some form of support services — but also raised doubts among neighbors.
“I’m not against it, per se,” said Yvette Bright-Poai, who lives on Puu Hina Street, less than half a mile from 34 Rainbow Drive. “But I want to know what they’ll do with the people already living there.”
The former hospital — which will undergo some extensive renovations next year — currently is being operated as a men’s shelter by HOPE Services Hawaii.
Bright-Poai said Puu Hina Street is the main thoroughfare for shelter residents to get to the 7-Eleven on Kaumana Drive and because of that, disruptions on her street, ranging from disorderly conduct to break-ins, are commonplace.
Maegan Kansana, another resident on Puu Hina Street, agreed, saying residents of the shelter are frequently intoxicated and troublesome, and HOPE Services doesn’t respond to neighbors’ complaints.
“If they’re going to do more over there, we want to see the residents be supervised better,” Kansana said.
Bright-Poai said further housing developments on the site should come with additional security services, and recommended that a police department substation be included with any development proposal. But she said that suggestion was shot down, on the grounds that it could serve as a deterrent for people to seek support services on the site.
Bright-Poai also noted that the vast majority of respondents to a county-run online poll regarding the property were from residents living two miles or more away from the site.
“You know they’re not trying to put this up on Sunrise Ridge, anywhere like that,” Bright-Poai said. “They’re putting it in an older community. It’s a big F-you to people who were born here, raised here, who lived here for generations.”
Kansana said she hopes that, if housing is built on the property, some units are held for Native Hawaiians, or that some Native Hawaiian cultural services are available.
By the end of Thursday’s open house, more than 30 attendees had chosen “affordable housing with support services” as their preferred option for the 10 acres, with less than half of that choosing the second-most popular option, “affordable multi-family rental units.” Only seven people chose the third option, which would be to build an emergency shelter.
Meanwhile, attendees wrote in several other possible uses for the site, including a community for active seniors, learning centers, or a restaurant.
Other attendees added their own concerns, such as the site’s proximity to medium-density housing and the Hawaii Community Correctional Center, and even the site’s reputation for being haunted — according to legend, crying children can still be heard from the burnt-out ruins of the hospital’s pediatric ward, lending it the nickname, “Babies Cry.”
Haunted or otherwise, development on the site is still a ways off. An official master plan for the parcel will be completed by the end of the year.
More information about the site, and a link to an online survey about what residents want to see done with it, can be found at tinyurl.com/35ve2p7k.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.