Plans for a new community emergency response center in Waimea are one step closer to becoming a reality after $5 million was allocated for the project in the state budget.
Nancy Carr Smith, president of the Waimea Community Association, has been driving the push for the new center. She said the need for such a site has become especially clear in recent years in the wake of several emergencies.
In 2021 and 2023, fires blazed through parts of the community, and last July, the town was inundated with evacuees from neighboring coastal areas following a tsunami warning.
At a community meeting last week, Waimea residents recalled how they opened up churches and schools to accommodate the influx of people. But residents also acknowledged those sites are not designed or fully equipped for evacuees.
“We just began to realize that we really need more support,” Carr Smith said. “We need a better place that’s reliable.”
The new center will be located at the Spencer Kalani Schutte Park. It will be nearly 8,000 square feet and feature a commercial kitchen, showers and serve as a centralized meeting point for coordinating resources and disaster response.
When not being used for an emergency, it will be treated as a community center. The county will be in charge of operating and maintaining it.
Carr Smith said plans were modified for a building that was previously designed for the park but never built, which allowed them to expedite the process.
“The plans are there, they’ve already been submitted to the county, and I think they’re just working on some details,” she said. “It’s a shovel-ready project, because all the infrastructure is already there at the park. It’s pretty exciting.”
Now, it is just a matter of getting the rest of the funding for the $15 million project. The money from the state is contingent on the county and private donors providing an additional $5 million each to cover the remaining cost of the project, a match agreement that state Rep. David Tarnas helped negotiate.
“I know there’s an urgency to getting this done,” he told the Tribune-Herald. “And I’m going to take full advantage of that sense of urgency and see if we can get the County Council to approve the money and ensure that we can secure the private funding.”
Carr Smith has been working on securing private donations and said she currently has just over $3 million pledged for the project. This includes $2 million from Lynne and Marc Benioff, the Salesforce CEO and his wife who own over 500 acres of land in the Waimea area. All private donations for the center are being routed through the Daniel R. Sayer Foundation, a local nonprofit.
At the county level, Mayor Kimo Alameda said he has been able to identify $3 million for the project and is looking for ways to make up the rest, along with County Council member James Hustace, who represents Waimea.
Hustace said he is optimistic the funding can be secured by the end of the year.
“I’ve been working with (the mayor) and working with our finance director to see how we can bring the rest of the dollars to the table,” Hustace said. “We are going through that budgeting process right now at the county level, so I do want to make sure that we have matching dollars from the county side to make it all come together.”
Email Grace Inez Adams at grace.adams@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
