Hawaii Volcanoes National Park will not be getting a new visitor center after all.
Earlier this year, the national park released an environmental assessment for a disaster recovery project that would make repairs and improvements throughout the park following the 2018 eruption and summit collapse of Kilauea volcano.
Among those proposed improvements was a plan to build a new visitor center adjacent to the current center, as well as a new 60-stall parking lot, to make up for the loss of the Jaggar Museum, which was structurally damaged and on ground too unstable to be used after the eruption. The current center was to be repurposed into administrative offices.
However, that plan has been canceled. A revised environmental assessment published Monday removed the plan for the new visitor center and parking lot based on community feedback.
“People didn’t want to see so much rainforest lost to build a new parking lot and visitor center,” said Danielle Foster, environmental protection specialist for HVNP.
“We mahalo everyone who shared their feedback on the disaster recovery project,” said HVNP Superintendent Rhonda Loh in a statement Monday. “We reviewed all the comments closely, and it is heartening to see how much passion the community has for their park and the cherished natural and cultural landscapes it protects.”
In lieu of a replacement center, Foster said the park will instead investigate ways to “rehabilitate” the current visitor center to make it more suitable for its heavy use as an interim measure until a less disruptive site for a new center is identified.
“It’s not going to address the traffic congestion problem, but it’s a short-term solution, and it’s faster than building a new center,” Foster said.
The current visitor center is aging and needs to be updated to address the needs of the thousands of visitors it sees every day, Foster said. Those updates could include changes to how the building’s internal space is utilized, improvements to its restroom facilities, and a reorganization of its lanai area.
Complicating matters is the building’s status as a historic structure. Foster said the park needs to investigate what changes are possible within the building’s existing footprint.
Because the specifics of the rehabilitation work have not been identified, Foster said it is not certain whether that work will require another environmental assessment. But because the visitor center is a “well-loved” building, she said the park likely will open a public comment period for that project even if it isn’t required.
Meanwhile, the remainder of the repairs within the disaster recovery project remain unchanged. Those repairs include:
• Removing damaged facilities, including Jaggar Museum and two adjacent USGS buildings, at Uekahuna bluff area;
• Repairing the restrooms at the Uekahuna bluff area;
• Repairing and restoring access to the Uekahuna bluff overlook;
• Building a natural surface trail to connect overlooks on Crater Rim Trail;
• Removing and replacing the existing water tanks in the Uekahuna bluff area;
• Replacing the USGS HVO research facilities and building a new field station near the ball field by Kilauea Military Camp;
• Improving the safety of the park entrance and realigning Crater Rim Drive, including the addition of a roundabout; and
• Deconstructing nonhistoric office space in the park research area and relocate those offices.
While an HVNP statement Monday said that work could begin as early as March 2023, Foster said it would more realistically begin around the summer, depending on how long the bidding process takes. The order in which these projects would be addressed will be at the contractor’s discretion, and could change based on factors such as endangered species’ nesting seasons.
Foster said the contractor will have a two-year window to complete all the work.
The full project was estimated earlier this year to cost $49 million, with the National Park Service contributing $28 million, although that estimate was made before the removal of the new visitor center plans.
Unfortunately, Foster said, without the new visitor center and parking lot, the disaster recovery project will not include new parking spaces anywhere in the park.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
