KILAUEA — “You can see the trees,” Kilauea School principal Fred Rose said Thursday afternoon.
“Before the cafeteria was moved, you could never see the trees when you looked down the hall. All you could see was the cafeteria,” he said.
The building, one of three on the school’s campus that is listed in the historical registry, was built in 1922 and sat there for 90 years.
Rose said the building will be replaced with a new school cafeteria and the former cafeteria will be converted to become the health room, main office, principal’s office, counselor’s office and a meeting room.
Based on the current timeline, Rose anticipates the new cafeteria to be ready when the school opens its doors later this summer, and the staff is already planning a grand opening lu‘au for late August.
“The new cafeteria will be built with the dining area first, and if school opens and the kitchen area is not finished, meals will be transported from Hanalei School,” Rose said. “But the students will have a place to eat.”
The new cafeteria will sit in an area more centrally located on the campus, and the site where the former cafeteria sat will be transformed into a parking lot.
That will retain the vista of trees from the neighboring lot and will uncover the steps that were covered when the cafeteria was built.
Rose said the new building will have one of the school’s entrances, the one located on the north end of campus, widened and the lane expanded to accommodate two lanes of traffic.
The old cafeteria will be turned so its main entrance faces the parking lot and will be located at the front of the campus.
“The only problem is that there is no money to work on converting the building,” Rose said. “So, for now, the building will be put on blocks until work can take place.”
As Rose surveyed the area where the cafeteria stood, his shoes uncovered a wealth of history — a steel pop-top can, one of the first aluminum pop-top cans, fragments of the original azure Coke bottle and a George’s Beverages soda bottle.
“There’s 90 years of history here,” he said.
