Recruit from afar
I read with a great deal of interest the Nov. 30 “Movers &Shakas” article.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown all of us how extremely and dangerously Hawaii’s economy is tourism-dependent.
For months, we’ve been wringing our hands about how do we become less dependent upon one industry. On the mainland, employers and employees alike are shaking their heads at how easy the transition has been for people commuting from home to office every day and instead working from home.
Zoom communications have almost replaced the need to have two cars in a household or a yearly pass on the commuter train. Plus, working from home is good for the environment.
Hawaii’s leaders need to make a concerted effort to recruit more individuals and families to leave the mainland and settle in Hawaii. Also, Hawaii’s educated youth would have reasons to remain here, raise their families here, support the local economies, and not have to leave their parents.
LeAnn McGranahan
Papaaloa
Downtown revitalization
Revitalizing downtown Hilo with an improvement district is a great idea.
Taxing local residents to shop there with parking meters is a really bad idea. Can’t you do better than that?
My personal story was I used to try very hard to patronize downtown businesses. Then I got a $20 parking ticket and never went back again.
They got smart and took out the meters, but it was too late.
There is a proposal to turn a small section of downtown Hilo into the first phase of a replacement for the International Marketplace in Waikiki. That tourist shopping niche was replaced by upscale shopping for the super rich.
Putting small local kiosks on both sides of each businesses front door is innovative and could make it a must-go sightseeing adventure. Requiring local crafts and a part-time opening schedule to fit tour bus and cruise ships could employ hundreds of our kupuna.
While being very creative, it’s not really thinking out-of-the-box. Visitors to Virginia City, Nevada, enjoy a replica gold-mining town. Visitors to Williamsburg, Virginia, can interact with the Civil War. There are dozens and dozens of examples. Let’s be one of them!
They had to work to create their niche, but we have aloha, and our friendly, honest and wonderful people sell themselves!
Face it, downtown improvement districts are across the entire country, and very few have the advantage that we do! Right now, we have the time to put everything in place before our 7.5 million annual visitors return. We need to be a desirable stop for the million visitors who visit the No. 1 rated national park in the country!
Get to work.
Michael Xavier Mamczarz
Kurtistown
Maunakea
Maunakea is an elemental part of the primordial universe, as Hawaiians know. She wore glaciers in the Ice Age, generations before people sailed to Hawaii.
Certainly, there is a compromise between everyone having the miraculous big picture of the cosmos that only the tallest terrestrial mirror lens can attain at only one blessed spot on Earth, while indeed venerating the aloha spirit of bright, expansive new horizons for all of her keiki.
Eliot Greenleaf
Hilo