LIHUE — Life around Lihue, even in the plantation days, has revolved around what is now Rice Street, even as the once rural landscape around it changed over the years. At the turn of the 20th century, when Lihue Plantation
LIHUE — Life around Lihue, even in the plantation days, has revolved around what is now Rice Street, even as the once rural landscape around it changed over the years.
At the turn of the 20th century, when Lihue Plantation and Grove Farm Plantation established the town as a profitable sugarcane production area, life revolved around the old Lihue Store at the corner of what is now Haleko Road and Rice Street, according to county planning documents.
Around that time, the area of town along Rice Street witnessed a surge of neoclassical architecture starting with its seat of government, the Historic County Building, which was unveiled in 1914.
A lot has changed since then, but the importance of Rice Street as a focal point in Lihue has not, said county planning officials, who are working with transportation and planning staff from Smart Growth America to determine how the nearly 2-mile long roadway should adapt to changes around it over time, especially when it comes down to parking.
Getting there, however, will not be easy.
“Rice Street, in general, is a freeway, so I don’t know if that was intentional or not,” Kauai Visitors Bureau Executive Director Sue Kanoho said at a county parking workshop Thursday. “It’s ridiculously dangerous.”
Changes planned to transform the Lihue Civic Center area into a transportation hub, in particular, will play a significant role in the future of Rice Street, said County Multimodal Transportation Planner Lee Steinmetz.
Among one of the more noticeable changes planned for the area, Steinmetz said, is alleviating future traffic congestion by moving services for the Kauai Bus on Hardy Street to the mauka side of Eiwa Street.
The move would transform Eiwa Street into a one-way street — from Hardy Street to Rice Street — and make it accessible to pedestrians, vehicles and bicycles.
Using the road’s current width, preliminary plans call for the creation of a multi-use pedestrian path onto Eiwa Street and bus turnout lanes, along with parking areas, on the mauka side of the street. Doing this, Steinmetz said, would allow for right turns only from Eiwa Street onto Rice Street and left turns from Rice Street to Eiwa Street.
This move, however, may pose a challenge for Rice Street in the future.
“One of the unique things about Lihue, and it’s a really important asset for people here, is that the government has a huge presence here, so when the government is doing things, the parking demand can kind of go up and down with that,” said Boulder, Colo.-based Smart Growth America consultant Jim Charlier. “One of your challenges will be to think about how do you integrate what’s going on with government activities and what’s going on with the private sector side. That’s going to be a particular challenge for you.”
Another challenge, he added, is the need to build the proper infrastructure on Rice Street and surrounding areas that encourage people to walk or bike short distances. These improvements, some say, should include making pedestrian areas into aesthetically pleasing spaces, so people find it more attractive to walk or bike.
“One of the challenges in our rural Lihue area is changing personal thinking about parking and destinations,” Lihue Business Association President Pat Griffin said. “I think one of our real challenges is not more (parking) spaces … but in trying to think about and make way to increase the desirability to walk.”
Rice Shopping Center President Esther Kawakami-Williams said she and other owners support future efforts to revitalize Rice Street but are wary of how parking issues along the busy Lihue corridor will be dealt with over time.
Parking, she explained, can be a problem sometimes because the shopping center has one of the largest open parking lots along Rice Street.
“There has been a lot of talk about the revitalization of Rice Street over the years, and I’m hoping that it will happen at some point, but we are a little concerned, because a lot of the neighboring businesses who have no parking use our parking,” Kawakami-Williams said. “At some point, if other businesses are going to be revitalized … we may get to the point where we’re not able to rent out these parking spaces because we’re going to need them for our own use. I’m very concerned about making public parking an integral part of that Rice Street revitalization.”
