Trees on the Old Mill Site: ʻAiea's Newest Green Space and Where to Get Outside This Season

"Our community's kūpuna who are no longer with us are smiling to see this open space become a realization," ʻAiea Community Association president Claire Tamamoto said in a release from the City's Department of Parks and Recreation. The open space she means is the 3.43-acre lot on Halewiliko Place. A sugar mill stood there for most of the twentieth century, and after it came down the land sat mostly bare for decades.

On October 9 and 10, volunteers planted the first trees there. On a map the site is ʻAiea Interim Park. The ʻAiea Community Association calls its long-range plan for the land Ke Ola O ʻAiea ʻOhana Park, The Life of ʻAiea Family Park.

For a long time, ʻAiea's large public forest has been up the ridge at Keaīwa Heiau State Recreation Area. The planting puts the start of a canopy in the old town center at the bottom of the hill, on ground the mill held for about a hundred years.

Thirty-four trees, nine kinds

Volunteers planted around the perimeter of the park. According to the City's release, the 34 trees cover nine species:

• Milo
• Lonomea
• Crape myrtle
• Narra
• Manele
• Puakenikeni
• Wiliwili
• Colvillea
• One Moreton bay fig

The trees came from the City and County of Honolulu's Division of Urban Forestry and a $34,000 grant from the Laura Jane Musser Fund. That works out to about a thousand dollars of grant money per tree.

The City credited a long list of organizations with coordinating and completing the planting and future park improvements. Along with the ʻAiea Community Association, the City named City Councilmember Radiant Cordero and ʻAiea Intermediate School. It also named the Aliʻi Pauahi Hawaiian Civic Club, Aloha Lā Halewilikō Senior Housing, The Outdoor Circle, and Trees for Honolulu's Future. The University of Hawaiʻi Tropical Landscape & Human Interaction Lab took part with Dr. Andy Kaufman, alongside the ʻAiea Neighborhood Board, Pali Momi Medical Center, Honolulu Community Action Program, and Boy Scout Troop 147. A senior housing community, an intermediate school, a scout troop, and a hospital all appear on the same list.

Why this particular lot

This lot sits in the old town because the town grew up around the plantation that ran it. The ʻAiea Town Center Master Plan, which the City published in May 2002 and the ʻAiea Community Association still hosts, gives the history in a few dense paragraphs:

1. 1898. The operation starts as the Halawa Plantation Company.
2. 1899. It becomes the Honolulu Plantation Company. Its 4,000 acres of cane run from the coastal plain around Pearl Harbor up into the hillsides.
3. Around the end of World War I. The company installs equipment to make its own refined sugar.
4. 1947. Plantation operations end after the company loses much of its prime cane land to military operations, roads, and commercial and housing development. California and Hawaiian Sugar Company, known as C&H, buys the refinery operations.
5. 1994. C&H stops refining there. A&B Properties builds a smaller liquid-sugar refinery behind the old mill, and the clothing maker Crazy Shirts buys the mill property, planning to preserve the mill and put its corporate headquarters there.
6. 1996. The liquid-sugar refinery closes.
7. 1998. Crazy Shirts decides renovation would cost too much and razes the mill despite community opposition.
8. May 2001. Bank of Hawaiʻi takes over the property.

According to the plan, the plantation prospered in the first half of the twentieth century, and that growth made Old ʻAiea Town "the commercial, social, cultural, and communication hub for the community." From the plantation's founding in 1898 to the demolition in 1998 is exactly one hundred years. The new trees went into the ground 28 years after that.

Twenty-eight years as an "interim"

The word "Interim" in the park's name goes back a long way. The 2002 master plan described the town-center site as essentially vacant after the 1998 demolition. It noted that Hawaiʻi Agriculture Research Center offices and labs occupied part of the former mill grounds at the time. The plan laid out a town center with a library, a senior facility, a greenbelt, and housing, and suggested using the site as a passive park in the meantime. Those were proposals for that era. They should not be read as a description of what the land holds today.

The vision behind this fall's planting comes from the ʻAiea Community Association, developed with students and faculty from a University of Hawaiʻi landscape and design class. According to the City, it includes a community center, outdoor play and exercise areas, and open turf among the new trees. All of that is still a plan. For now the site is turf with saplings along its edges.

Dr. Myles Ritchie, programs director with The Outdoor Circle, described the planting in the City's release as "the first step in creating a new tree-filled greenspace for the ʻAiea community." He said it will eventually come with more plantings and the community center the association has long wanted. He also noted that the project "has been in the design phase for years."

Tamamoto put the timeline more plainly in the same release:

"So many hands have touched this project from way back. I am deeply grateful for all those who have helped and continue to keep this decades-old vision alive."

A milo or a wiliwili planted this October will take years to give real shade. Until then the edge of the lot shows where the canopy will be, so a walk past Halewiliko Place this month will look different from one last summer.

Up the ridge: the forest ʻAiea already has

To walk under full-grown trees today, ʻAiea Heights Drive ends at the town's long-established green space. The State's Keaīwa Heiau State Recreation Area covers 384 acres. The Division of State Parks describes it as a forested park with picnic areas, campgrounds, and the trailhead for the ʻAiea Loop Trail. The State lists 384 acres up the ridge, and the new park downhill covers 3.43.

The park is named for its heiau. The State describes Keaīwa Heiau as a healing temple connected with laʻau lapaʻau, the practice built on medicinal plants, fasting, and prayer.

The ʻAiea Loop Trail runs 4.8 miles. The State rates it easy to moderate, with forest and open ridge sections and views from Pearl Harbor to Diamond Head. From the ridge, hikers look down over the same coastal plain the Honolulu Plantation once planted in cane.

The schedule matters this time of year. Keaīwa runs on winter hours, 7 a.m. to 6:45 p.m., starting the day after Labor Day. The gate closes early in the evening, so finish the loop before then. State Parks posts closures on its important park notices page, and that page is worth checking before a weekend hike. Campsite availability is best confirmed directly with State Parks before you plan an overnight stay.

Back down the hill on December 12

The group that kept the park idea going for decades also puts on the town's holiday morning. The ʻAiea Community Association has announced the 2026 ʻAiea Christmas Parade and Family Fun Fair for Saturday, December 12. The parade starts at 9 a.m. at Pearl Ridge Elementary, and the Family Fun Fair begins at 10 a.m. next to ʻAiea Library.

The association is asking for help, too. Its announcement invites groups to walk or drive in the parade, set up a booth or perform at the fair, or volunteer. The City's release on the planting lists Boy Scout Troop 147, Aloha Lā Halewilikō Senior Housing, and Pali Momi Medical Center among the organizations that helped.

The association's slogan, which Tamamoto repeated in the City's release, is "building a sense of community." She said the group would stay committed to it "for those kūpuna and the keiki of today and tomorrow." The next date on the association's calendar is the parade, at 9 a.m. on December 12 at Pearl Ridge Elementary.

At Discover Hawaii Properties, we follow changes like the trees on Halewiliko Place because the history of a place shapes how it feels to live there. If you would like to talk about ʻAiea or Pearl City, or about what a home near the old town center means for your plans, we are glad to share what we know. Contact Us.