HONOLULU — By order of the state Intermediate Court of Appeals, a three-judge panel in July granted a temporary injunction brought by the Friends of Haiku Stairs that forced the city to stop its $2.6 million demolition job on the World War II-era mountainside staircase.
But the court’s July 3 ruling allowed the city to remove stairs that its contractor, The Nakoa Cos., had detached on both sides of the Koolau range.
“The city may remove the approximately 60 stair modules of Moanalua Saddle Stairs and approximately 10 to 15 stair modules of the Haiku Stairs that were detached by the city’s contractor prior to the entry of this court’s June 20, 2024 order for temporary injunction,” the ruling states.
That order, according to court documents, was not followed in Haiku Valley, however.
Namely, the city administration’s sanctioned removal of 10 to 15 steel stair modules — out of the hundreds of such modules bolted to a sheer ridgeline in Windward Oahu that comprise the “Stairway to Heaven” was not done because modules in question were not “fully” detached, as the city previously claimed.
In a July 12 corrective notice to the state Intermediate Court of Appeals, city Deputy Corporation Counsel Daniel Gluck wrote, “The city has been informed by its contractor that — upon inspecting the stair modules this week in preparation for further work, per the court’s July 3 order — the 10 to 15 modules on the Haiku section of the Stairs the contractor believed to have been fully detached are, in fact, partially detached.”
“Consistent with the court’s July 3 order, the city has instructed the contractor not to remove those modules, but instead to secure the modules in place,” Gluck wrote. “The contractor has confirmed that the 10-15 modules will be secured, but not removed. The city offers this information solely to ensure accuracy in its submissions to the court.”
On Friday, Ian Scheuring, the mayor’s deputy communications director, confirmed that the approximately 60 stair modules of the Moanalua Saddle Stairs “were removed this week.”
“So the 10 to 15 on the Haiku side were not removed per Dan Gluck’s declaration to the court,” he added.
Justin Scorza, the Friends’ vice president, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that his group suspected the city had not actually detached the staircase modules in Haiku Valley.
“Back when the appellate hearing took place, the city was claiming to have unsecured several of the modules on the stairs, (and) we were upset about that because we didn’t think that was true,” he said, noting his group filed a request for clarification “and the city asked its contractor to look into it.”
“And it turned out that the contractor actually hadn’t started work,” he added. “So we were right that they were inaccurate in their description of the stairs on the Haiku side as opposed to the Moanalua backside.”
As far as its ongoing case to halt the city’s full demolition of the Haiku Stairs, Scorza said, “It’s a big deal because any modules that get removed would be very difficult and expensive to replace.”
“And so the whole point is we want to preserve the stairs as they are so that they can be improved and reopened as an asset to the community,” he said. “So preserving them in place without doing any damage to them is really the best way to go, and that’s what we asked the court to order, and now that we have that order, we’re very appreciative that it applies to 100% of the Haiku Stairs.”
Meanwhile, the Friends filed a plaintiff-appellants legal brief by an Aug. 5 deadline to the Court of Appeals.
As they’ve argued previously, the group’s legal position in part states that a “2019 Final Environmental Impact Statement at issue in this case concluded with the city electing in 2020 to preserve the Stairs for the express purpose of making them available for public recreational use with the support of then-Mayor Caldwell.”
“The current administration’s sudden and drastic change of course from preservation to destruction has never been explained and stands in stark contrast to the goal of every other city administration since the Haiku Stairs were first acquired from the federal government over 25 years ago. However, this appeal is not about politics. The city’s about face is not only indefensible, it is also unlawful.”
Among other things, the Friends’ brief says that “the city’s plan to remove the Stairs violates the Hawaii Environmental Policy Act.”
The “city ignores these objectives and treats HEPA as a shell game in which an EIS prepared on behalf of a different agency for completely different purposes, which culminated in a final action can simply be recycled half a decade later without justifying the reversal or taking stock of changed circumstances,” the group’s brief argued.
The city has until Sept. 3 to respond to the Friends’ brief.
According to Scorza, after the respective legal arguments are reviewed, the court likely will schedule an oral arguments hearing in late 2024.
“The question will be, Should the case be overturned on appeal?” he said, adding that if so, the case could then be sent to a lower court for review.
The city administration — which called for the Haiku Stairs’ removal due to public-safety concerns, city liability costs, trespassing and disturbances to nearby residents — previously stated that ongoing legal challenges will not permanently halt the city’s demolition project.
The work — to be done via a Hughes 500D helicopter and roughly a half-dozen ground workers set to hoist hundreds of steel stair modules off the ridgeline above the H-3 freeway — was originally expected to be completed by October, weather permitting.
