Development battles on the North Shore go back for years and we do what we can to support the locals. Lately, the intensity has been turned up with a slew of projects that threaten the ‘country’ nature of the North Shore.
The most recent battle features Sharks Cove, which sits at the north end of Pupukea, on Oahu’s North Shore — a set of tide pools, small businesses, and cars parked along the coastal highway. It has been a hub of coastal life on that stretch of road for decades. Now the City and County of Honolulu wants to spend $24 million there on what it is calling an ocean safety hub, a first-responder facility for the North Shore. To build it, the plan is to tear down eight local businesses, including Sunrise Shack — the beloved coffee-and-açaí spot run by North Shore locals Travis and Koa Smith.
Most locals are not opposed to the safety hub. They’re all for supporting the lifeguards and ocean safety. What the big question is why the project cannot fit on the 60 percent of the parcel that is currently unoccupied — and why nobody has drawn a plan, produced a timeline, or explained anything to them other than that they will get 90 days’ notice when it is time to leave.
The root of the problem stems from, of all things, a Facebook group. “There’s a Facebook group of a bunch of wealthy older people who aren’t from Hawaii but who have recently moved to the North Shore,” Koa Smith said. “They’re ex-real-estate developers, business people, a lawyer from DC, who have been working to get the businesses shut down at Sharks Cove for a few years now. I’ve been on city council Zoom meetings with them. They live kind of near Sharks Cove, and they just hate the foot traffic, car traffic, and attention that the businesses bring.”
If the Sharks Cove story sounds familiar, it is because it is not the first crusade. Last year, Smith said, the same group pushed to close some North Shore beaches during the summer. Two years ago, they successfully lobbied the city to destroy the local DIY skate park, citing public safety. The framing is consistent: environmental concern, public safety, quality of life. The evidence to support any of it, in Smith’s telling, is thin to nonexistent.
“They just want things to be quiet and nice and posh here,” Smith said. “But they’re clever about it, and always arguing for things by citing environmental or public safety reasons to city council without providing evidence for it. It’s like that South Park ‘Going Native’ episode out here.”
Sean Quinlan, the Hawaii state representative whose district includes the North Shore, described the mechanism plainly.
“These people, this group of Facebook Karens, just keep calling the city every single day nonstop and are smart about it, and have it to the point where the city genuinely thinks this is what the North Shore wants,” Quinlan said. “The Karens have basically persuaded the city that they would be heroes to spend money on a first responder hub, when the real point of what they’re doing is to slyly get what they’ve always wanted, which is to kick these local businesses out of here.”
Smith added a detail that you wouldn’t expect, but helps show the ridiculousness of it all. “This group loves the Foodland here at Sharks Cove, and that place price-gouges us locals to no end because of how remote the North Shore is. It’s all just fucked up.”
“All we’re asking for is for the businesses to be able to stay alongside the ocean safety hub,” Travis Smith said. “At the very least, let us stay until construction begins. Currently, there are no plans, no drawings, no timeline. They’ve just said they’ll let us know when we have 90 days to leave. That’s how things are with politics, and why it’s all been very sneaky behind closed doors — where a few wealthy, educated people who are good at persuading those in power are making it seem like the whole North Shore wants this when really just they do.”
“At the end of the day, we just won’t compromise. We want our lifeguards to have what they need, and we want these important eight businesses to survive. There’s more than enough land. We can do both.”
Related: Why The North Shore Doesn’t Want “The North Shore Club”
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