Honolulu council OKs hotel project ADVERTISING Honolulu council OKs hotel project HONOLULU (AP) — Honolulu officials approved plans for a 400-foot-tall condominium-hotel tower to be built across from the Hawaii Convention Center. The City Council voted Wednesday in support of
Honolulu council OKs hotel project
HONOLULU (AP) — Honolulu officials approved plans for a 400-foot-tall condominium-hotel tower to be built across from the Hawaii Convention Center.
The City Council voted Wednesday in support of Manaolana Partners’ proposal for the 36-story building. The company plans to build more than 230 residential and visitor units along with a street-level commercial plaza.
The developer agreed to provide $7 million in community benefits for the project, including an affordable housing component, in exchange for greater density of the structure and fewer restrictions.
The company has the option to partner with a public housing development agency to provide at least 20 affordable housing rental units or contribute the monetary equivalent of the units up to $3 million into a city housing development fund. Manaolana Partners also can build the 20 affordable renting units.
But housing advocates say there needs to be more units catering to low-income residents included in the plans. James Ratkovich of Manaolana Partners said the company will continue to meet with the community.
Construction is expected to start next year and be finished in 2020, Ratkovich said.
First of last USS Arizona survivors dies
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The memories of bombs falling on the USS Arizona were too painful for Raymond Haerry to ever return to Pearl Harbor, while he lived.
But that’s precisely where he wants to be laid to rest.
Haerry was one of the last living crew members on the Arizona during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He died Sept. 27 in Rhode Island at the age of 94, said his son, Raymond Haerry Jr. He was one of six remaining Arizona survivors.
Hundreds of sailors and Marines are entombed in the ship’s sunken hull.
“As he was getting closer to the end, I think he felt that if there’s any place that he’d like to be at rest, it would be with his crewmates, the people who suffered and died on that day,” Haerry Jr. said Friday.
The ship lost 1,177 men, nearly four-fifths of its crew.
Haerry would serve 25 years in the Navy, retiring as a master chief. He lived with his wife of 70 years, Evelyn, at a nursing home in West Warwick, R.I. Evelyn Haerry is now 95 years old.
Only USS Arizona survivors can be interred on the ship. Haerry Jr. said he’ll take his father’s ashes there when he can afford the trip.
