HONOLULU — The Friends of Haiku Stairs’ recently filed legal injunction to stop the city’s demolition of the World War II-era staircase, above Haiku Valley and the H-3 freeway in Kaneohe, partially advanced this week.
On Thursday a three-judge panel overseeing the Intermediate Court of Appeals granted the Friends’ June 10 request to halt the destruction of the “Stairway to Heaven,” though temporarily.
According to the two-page order signed by Acting Chief Judge Katherine G. Leonard, the City and County of Honolulu “is hereby enjoined from altering, demolishing, or removing all or any part of the Haiku Stairs — directly or indirectly through its agents, representatives, employees, agencies, and/or contractors — pending this court’s entry of a further order on the motion for injunction pending appeal.”
The decision followed the city’s own filing Tuesday to challenge the Friends’ injunction and to continue its plans to demolish the stairs.
Now the appellate court is expected to hold a 3 p.m. Wednesday hearing for oral arguments from both sides, before deciding whether to grant the Friends’ request for a longer injunction, according to Justin Scorza, the Friends’ vice president.
“Got ’em,” Scorza told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser by phone Thursday afternoon, following the court’s quick decision, which he admitted came “kind of out of the blue.”
Still, he said with that decision, “the city has to stop all work. It may last longer, but for now it may last up until the hearing, Wednesday.”
Conversely, the city remained undeterred in its effort to remove the Haiku Stairs.
“Courts routinely grant temporary orders, to preserve the status quo and give the court time to consider a case more fully. The city believes that the facts and the law are on our side, as two Circuit Court judges have already ruled, and we look forward to presenting our case to the ICA on Wednesday,” Ian Scheuring, the mayor’s deputy communications director, told the Star-Advertiser via email.
The injunction to stop, albeit temporarily, had advanced quickly.
During a June 7 status conference in their case, 1st Circuit Senior Environmental Judge Lisa W. Cataldo directed that the Friends’ prior May 31 “request for an injunction pending appeal” — related to its rejected 2023 lawsuit, the first of two, in which an appeal was later sought — had to be filed with state’s appellate court.
But Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s administration — which called for the Haiku Stairs’ removal due to public- safety concerns, city liability costs, trespassing and disturbances to nearby residents — has stated that ongoing legal challenges will not permanently halt the city’s nearly $2.6 million demolition project.
The work to remove the staircase — to be done by the contractor The Nakoa Cos. via a Hughes 500D helicopter and roughly a half-dozen ground workers set to hoist 664 steel stair modules — is expected to take up to six months to complete, weather permitting.
In a written statement issued Thursday afternoon, Scorza asserted that instead of demolishing the Haiku Stairs, the city could reopen them under plans created by former Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration in 2019.
“The prior administration developed detailed plans to open the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ under managed access, using a public trail that avoids nearby neighborhoods, and solves concerns about trespassing,” Scorza said in the statement.
And the protest to save the Haiku Stairs will continue, as the Friends plan to host a show of support at 8 a.m. Saturday at the Koko Crater Stairs in Hawaii Kai.
Volunteers with the Friends will staff a table at the base of the crater hike from 8 to 10 a.m., with information and donation-based T-shirts, while supplies last, the group says.
The group notes the Koko Crater Stairs were once at risk of closure, but were saved and restored thanks to the preservation efforts of a local nonprofit group called the Kokonut Koalition, as it worked with the city and county to keep that hiking attraction around and above East Honolulu.
“We admire Kokonut Koalition’s success in saving the Koko Crater Stairs and want to gather at our second favorite stairway hike to highlight what is possible when a volunteer nonprofit is able to partner with the city,” Scorza said.
