Blessing ceremony celebrates completion of accessibility project at Richardson Ocean Park in Hilo

Richardson Ocean Park in the Keaukaha area of Hilo is now more accessible to everyone — especially people with disabilities — after the completion of more than $5 million in upgrades.

The Hawai‘i County Parks and Recreation Department invited the community to a blessing ceremony Tuesday morning at the park to celebrate. Several county officials, project managers and others attended.

“What an honor it is to be standing here today in this amazing place and just to think about where this has gone and where it is today,” said Hawai‘i County Mayor Mitch Roth. “This place has such meaning.”

The project began in summer 2022. It included construction of new accessible walkways, parking areas and showers; upgrades to comfort stations, public restrooms and electrical systems; and renovations at the Richardson Ocean Center, which hadn’t been refurbished since the building was constructed in the mid-1920s.

The project’s primary goal was to enhance accessibility throughout the park to comply with the Federal Americans with Disabilities Act. It is one of several projects around the island to ensure county parks meet the act’s requirements and make them more accessible.

Roth said more Hawaiians are living outside Hawai‘i now than here, leading to loss of culture and identity. Places such as Richardson Ocean Park and its ocean center help kids not only connect to the place but appreciate their roots and history.

“We are privileged to steward this special place, where many of our residents continue to create lasting memories,” Roth said Tuesday afternoon. “This project is special because it offers opportunities for everyone to enjoy this space while enhancing existing infrastructure to deepen engagement with the ocean, our culture and each other. We can only hope this project will continue to bring people together and create opportunities for our keiki to anchor themselves and their families here for generations to come.”

Improvements to the Richardson Ocean Center — the former home of the park’s namesake George Richardson and only county-owned ocean center on the island — will enrich the unique recreation and education programs offered there.

They include a spring enrichment program that will start soon; an upcoming summer program; the Waiuli Learning Project, an after-school program on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays each week featuring organized ocean recreation programming and tutoring; and La ‘Ohana Days, community enrichment programs on the last Saturday of each month where volunteers focus on taking care of a specific piece of property at the park.

Many of the programs are focused on teaching youth ‘ike kai, or ocean knowledge, such as ocean awareness and safety, marine science, sailing and paddling.

The center now also houses artifacts and informational displays on loan from the Bishop Museum focused on Hawaiian ocean traditions such as surfing, sailing and fishing. Some are even interactive, including a knot-tying station.

The exhibits will be changed every 3 months.

“It’s a unique facility in its own self because there’s no recreation facility that provides this type of service, this type of opportunity for kids that can explore and learn and live,” said Kalani Kahalioumi, the recreation specialist who manages the ocean center programs for the county.

Parks and Rec is planning to open the center to the public, but is still working on coordinating volunteer staff, which it hopes will be completed fairly soon.

“This is a special day for the community,” Kahalioumi said later Tuesday. “Our vision is for Richardson Ocean Park and the Richardson Ocean Center to be places where many organizations and individuals can come together and create amazing experiences for our community that are all connected to the ocean.”

But it’s not what’s inside the ocean center that’s most important. There are 8 acres of amazing educational opportunities for the tens of thousands of local residents and visitors who come to the park each month.

“Everything is alive. Everything is abundant,” Kahalioumi said during the blessing ceremony. “It’s good that our kids can use this space to explore different things.”

Isaiah Walker was born and raised in Keaukaha near Richardson’s. He and Kahalioumi grew up together with the park as their backyard.

He learned how to swim there, ran around the fishpond and other areas of the 8-acre park with his childhood friends and developed a deep connection and camaraderie with the place and community.

It became a kind of pu‘uhonua, a place of refuge, for him through tough times, including after his parents divorced. He also scattered his father’s ashes there.

“A lot of my memories and my identity are linked to this place,” said Walker, who is now academic vice president at Brigham Young University-Hawai‘i on O‘ahu. “Being from this place grounded me as this ʻāina hānau [birthplace] that always filled my sense of worth and identity. I knew I could take on the world and all the challenges because of that strong sense of feeling of strength that I gained from this particular space.”

He’s experienced firsthand the impact of Richardson’s mana, its power and strength. Walker is glad the park, Richardson Ocean Center and educational opportunities offered there are now more accessible for everyone, especially local residents and keiki.

“Access for our local kids near the ocean is increasingly more and more difficult,” he said. “So it really brings pleasure and warmth and hope to my heart to see that programs like this provide that accessibility for our keiki and for our lāhui [people] to come and to enjoy this space.”

Parks and Rec is proud and excited to be making progress on accessibility improvements at park facilities around the island.

“Recreation resources are critical for health and well-being and should be available to everyone,” said Hawai‘i County Department of Parks and Recreation Director Maurice Messina on Tuesday afternoon. “We are thrilled to share the completion of the Richardson Ocean Park project with the community.”