City News: Cleanup Breathes New Life Into Makaha Park

Councilwoman Kymberly Marcos Pine

Parks are gathering places for families, organizations and community groups to meet, recreate and enjoy.

As your councilwoman, one of my ongoing goals is to keep the parks in our district safe and clean for our community by ensuring our parks department has the funding it needs for ongoing maintenance and new capital construction projects, encouraging communities to be good stewards of our parks, and creating a new adopt-a-park program to make it easier for communities to create and participate in park-adoption projects.

Recently, we spent a beautiful Saturday afternoon on the Leeward coast at Makaha Community Park renovating the park bathroom, providing new play equipment and planting ti leaf plants on the park grounds. This event kicked off the next phase of my ongoing commitment to revitalize Leeward coast parks and transform the community.

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Makaha Community Park bathroom before the cleanup.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell joined us to help plant ti and showed his support for our efforts at the Makaha Community Park rededication, as he delivered a message of civic pride and community duty to be good stewards of our recreation resources.

It’s amazing to see what can be achieved when volunteers come together to revive their community.

In partnership with state Department of Parks and Recreation, Laborers International 368, Grace Pacific Maintenance Solutions, Pacific Links Foundation, PBR and Associates, Hawaii Electrical Workers and Active Hawaii Foundation, we combined our efforts to clean up, paint and refurbish the heavily used park.

Volunteers helped to restore the park’s comfort station with fresh paint and MicroGuard protective coating that resists graffiti and staining, and installed new lights for safety.

Meanwhile, our parks department replaced all fixtures, sinks and toilets, and community members participated in a park cleanup, painted benches and removed graffiti from the park grounds.

The before-and-after results are profound and provide a fresh new outlook to the park.

Contact City Councilwoman Kymberly Marcos Pine (District 1 — Ewa, Ewa Beach, Kapolei, Makakilo, Kalaeloa, Honokai Hale, Ko Olina, Nanakuli, Maili, Waianae, Makaha, Keaau and Makua) by phone at 768-5001, via email at kmpine@honolulu.gov or online by visiting councilmember-pine.com.