Ever felt as though you were taken for granted, always expected to be there for someone else, always on call with no collaboration or assistance from others?
Ever felt as though you were taken for granted, always expected to be there for someone else, always on call with no collaboration or assistance from others?
No doubt we’ve all felt that way a few times. Imagine what the Civic Auditorium might feel like, except for the part that buildings don’t actually feel anything at all.
Point is, we have been a little bit selfish toward a fully serviceable, versatile and already paid for facility that has served the Big Island well for more than 60 years. Go around the state, the West Coast, the whole country, and see how many other communities are as well accommodated by a multipurpose facility that has worked for decades and isn’t causing our taxes to rise.
The place we know as the Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium, at 61, might as well take human form for the diversity of events that occur within its walls for the benefit of us all. It was originally named the County of Hawaii Field House back in 1956, and if you’ve been there more times than you can recall and didn’t realize that, take a minute next time and check out the small plaque inside the front doors on a west wall near the restroom that authenticates the original name.
Admittedly, after attending events there more times can be recalled, it was just the other day that recreation administrator Mason Souza pointed out the historic commemorative plaque to a reporter and photographer who had never noticed it before.
Souza would like to see the facility’s history presented in framed newspapers and photographs from memorable moments hanging on the walls for all to see.
“You can feel the history when you walk in here,” Souza said the other day, stretching out his arms and looking around. “This is a place where a lot of great things have happened, there are memories for ages here.”
Just now, the facility might be more valuable to the community than it has ever been. More on that in a minute, but an example of the versatility of the modest structure on Piilani Street was on display over the weekend.
The Civic played host to the Lehua Hawaii Pageant, an “achievement pageant,” for young women, according to director Jennifer Kaaihue who was overseeing the staging of the event last week.
Kaaihue spends all week once a year to set up the stage, arrange seating, construct the theme — it’s a takeoff on the musical “Grease” this year — and get everything in order to host the culmination of a three-month program for the girls involved.
“This is really fun and it gives these girls a look at a bigger world out there,” Kaaihue said. “This place works great for us, it’s not too big, it’s not too small, it’s centrally located and the people we work with here have been great.
“People think of the Civic as a place for basketball,” she said, “but it’s so much more than that. This is a very valuable asset to the community, but I’m not sure everyone realizes that.”
This week it’s a young women’s pageant, next week it’s a county fair, not far off in the future, basketball will back at the Civic, hosting high school and college games for both genders.
When basketball returns, you’ll likely be impressed by the new look.
Souza and four others completely resurfaced and painted the floor, highlighting the key and an area around the center circle with stain that makes those spots look like native koa wood. Tropical flowers fill out the center circle, ringed by the words “County of Hawaii,” replacing the old blue and red “Hilo” designation.
Purely personal opinion? The new floor looks great, good enough to possibly spark a resurgence in interest in this versatile structure that serves the county so well.
“We took Hilo off and made it reflect what the truer nature of this building is,” said Souza. “This is for Hawaii County, for everyone, it isn’t just for Hilo people.”
The cost was negligible, according to Brittany Kaleohano of the Parks and Recreation Department.
“We have a crew that works these kinds of jobs, they do fencing and other things,” she said, “so nothing was contracted out. The crew spent from June 13-Aug. 23 on it and they did a pretty great job.”
This is how things are supposed to work, public employees making improvements on public facilities as necessary. In the process of taking the surface down to bare wood, Souza and others discovered the original floor is still there, right underneath the floor with the new facelift.
“That tells me that this place is built for the long term,” he said, “but we have to keep in mind that you can’t just look the other way and expect it to always be there at its best.”
Souza said at some point in the not-too-distant future, electrical work will need to be done as the building, remarkably enough, is still using the original wiring from 61 years ago. The lights way up on the ceiling are outdated and need to be replaced with newer, more efficient LED lighting that will reduce monthly fees for electricity.
“I can’t tell you how much, but we lose a lot of money turning these old lights on,” he said. “They work fine, but the old way to light buildings is a lot more expensive than the new ways we have.”
The county has a hand shake agreement of sorts with the University of Hawaii at Hilo to redo the locker rooms they use for basketball, and the men’s lockers have been refurbished with modest, more than sufficient new lockers. The room could use a cool indoor/outdoor carpet that would prominently display a Vulcans logo, but that may be more of a long term project while they await a do-over for the women’s lockers.
“This looks pretty good,” Souza said last week on a walk though of the men’s locker room, “but wouldn’t it be nice to have a rug on the floor? We used to have nails and hangers on the walls, now it looks like a real locker room, and I can imagine the high school teams coming in here and being impressed, maybe wanting to be a part of the Vulcans in the future.
“If nothing else, these lockers should make high school teams feel like they just took a step up,” he said. “There’s nothing over the top, it’s just, really basic stuff, but it looks good, it looks like somebody cared enough to make it look better.”
That’s a key point.
Perception, more than ever, is reality, and it would not take much to make the Civic come back to life, inside and out. They already put on a new roof and resurfaced the parking lot, eliminating deep puddles in rain and dust blowing on dry days. Before the season starts, the county intends to repaint the interior all white, and along with the rebuilt floor, it should transfer the interior view of the building.
A lot could be done for next to nothing on the exterior. Tweaking county laws to allow a public-private partnership on the facility would be a major development because it would allow a company to sponsor a reader board out front that would display upcoming events for the traffic that passes by daily.
“I’m pretty sure some corporation would be more than willing to put their name on a reader board that would connect their business with the traffic we have each day and, it would also connect them to UHH,” Souza said. “That would not be a tough sell.”
All these things would help, because when you think about what the Big Island has in this facility, you come to the realization it is basically everything we want, and all we need.
There’s no reason to think of a bigger facility, or a smaller one. The size, roughly 3,000 for basketball, is just about perfect. It would be a much better venue for the major basketball tournaments that visit the state than, say, Maui’s Lahaina Civic Center which seats less than a third the crowd than the Civic.
The Civic already has the best basketball floor on the island, often used for practices by UHH teams because its own floor is frequently unplayable, as are the school’s soccer and baseball facilities. It is a fully functional facility that more than adequately serves the needs of the Big Island.
So much could be done, without a lot of effort, to make this vital structure look and function like the jewel it is, like the big living room in our ohana.