Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 26, Number 9, 1 Kepakemapa 2009 — Gift of land to bolster education and housing [ARTICLE]

Gift of land to bolster education and housing

The Wai'anae Coast, home to one of Hawai'i's largest concentrations of Native Hawaiians, has been tapped as the recipient of a $100 million Learning Innovation Center, the Honoluhi Star-Bulletin reported. The center will be built by Kamehameha Schools on land donated by developer Ieffrey R. Stone and the Weinberg Trust. For the economically strapped Leeward Coast, where schools also have chronically poor outcomes in standardized tests, the new eomplex will serve as a laboratory for teachers and as a site for land-based and project-based learning activities. Stone and the Weinberg Trust have decided to donate 66-acre parcel of undeveloped land west of Mākaha Valley Country Club to Kamehameha

Schools by January. They also plan to incrementally donate to the Department of Hawaiian Homelands an adjacent 234 acres, including a golf course. The news is being hailed by residents and officials of DHHL and Kamehameha Schools. Kamehameha Schools is the state's largest private landowner but owns no Leeward Coast property. The new learning center is seen as a way to foster an innovative approach to education, with plans calling for a focus on early education, eultural and land-based learning projects and the fostering of already successful Leeward Coast educational programs, such as the nationally recognized Searider Productions media program at Wai'anae High School and the Nānākuli High School Performing Arts Center. DHHL officials say they expect to use the donated land to offer housing to Hawaiian families. The land that is slated for donation was purchased for an estimated $5 million in 2004 by Stone's West Honolulu Investments LLC. The Weinberg Trust later partnered with Stone and they invested $2 million for improvements.