City to close Moiliili Neighborhood Park for month-long maintenance and renovations
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Moiliili Neighborhood Park is one of the city’s busiest. But when you look at its nearly three and a half acres, you can definitely tell its overdue for a refresh.
On Wednesday afternoon, a team of girls from Manoa are practicing softball on a field that has seen some better days.
“I really like it -- aside from the mud pit that’s over here that’s we’re standing in front of,” said softball coach Sweet T., next to an area where water appears to have been leaking from an underground pipe.
As for the rest, “If you take a look at the condition of the fields, they’re pretty dry,” said Nate Serota with the city Parks and Recreation Department.
Serota said the department will be fixing that -- and more.
“Improving irrigation that’s there, aerating the field, making it a lot nicer conditions for people to come in and do permitted activities like youth baseball,” he said.
The park’s comfort station had also become a hangout for the homeless for several years. The city has been doing enforce3ment actions there twice a month, but the restrooms still need a lot of work.
“There’s quite a bit of graffiti on the inside of the bathrooms so we’re going to take care of that and take care of the fixtures that are broken inside as well,” Serota said.
All that is going to take almost all of next month, with the park closed from October 2 through 31. That means the girls on the softball team will have to find another place to practice their hitting, pitching and fielding.
“It’s great that the sports are growing, but there’s not that many parks left for us to practice,” said Sweet T.
“It might affect us for a little while as our season runs into next month, so we’ll probably be looking for another place to practice in town, which is harder and harder to find because of football and stuff like that going on now,” said softball and baseball coach Al Estes.
The city hopes the improvements will field some benefits in the long run.
“From the comfort station to the aeration of the field, to the painting, to the toilets, you name it -- I’m just happy that we’re really rehabilitating a park that has been highly used before in the past,” said City Councilmember Calvin Say.
“We’re really hoping again, ‘If you build it, they will come,’ where if we improve the facilities, we’ll get more regular park users and more permitted users back at that location,” Serota said.
“If everything’s clean, it will attract a lot of people,” said Estes.
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