Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 3, Number 12, 1 December 1986 — Natatorium Frlends Seek Restoration [ARTICLE]

Natatorium Frlends Seek Restoration

An organization calling itself Friends of the Natatorium are working for the complete restoration andreuse of the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium, a neglected now forlorn structure on the Kapiolani Park waterfront that is on both the Nahonal and Hawaii Registers of Historic Places.

The organization hopes to gain the support of an overwhelming number of Hawaii's people for repairing and rebuilding the pool, bleachers, arcaded facade, dressing rooms and diving tower so that the Natatorium will look again as it did when it opened in August, 1927. It is the Friends' goal, too, that the plaee will onee again be the useful "Living Memorial" it was meant to be. Support in the form of a resolution eame during the Nov. 13-15 Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs 27th annual convention on Kauai when delegates uanimously threw its backing behind the efforts of the Friends of the Natatorium.

It is the State lawmakers who must decide the fate of the long neglected and now rotting and virtually abandoned monument to Hawaii's men and women who served in World War I. The Friends point out that the memorial is the pool itself, a natatorium that is unique, longer than a football field and twice the length of the other salt-water pools around the Pacific. The Friends acknowledge that full restoration would be the most costly of any of the plans under consideration, an estimated $11 million as compared to $4.6 million for opening part of the ewa and makai sides, establishing a beach within the remaining walls, destroying the facade except for the archway and moving it closer to Kalakaua; and $6.7 million for creating a grassy peninsula in the pool area, demolishing the bleachers for fill.

"Making the Natatorium whole again and giving it a new life is not just a matter of dollars and cents but rather a matter of our heritage and thus worth the extra cost," says a release by the Friends of the Natatorium. lnquiries should be made by calling 488-8381 or write Friends of the Natatorium, 98-211 Pali Momi St., Suite 615, Aiea, Hawaii 96701.