Historic preservation, once widely popular in America, is facing new threats from politicians in both Hawaiʻi and the nation’s capital.

There seems to be a growing appetite for building things faster by getting rid of regulatory burdens that real estate developers believe have impeded their projects and prevented worthy developments from proceeding.

Many people agree that some reform of the land-development process is needed and that some processes have become overly bureaucratic. Understaffing historic preservation offices has also contributed to delays, as have unwieldy permit-approval processes. And increasingly, at least some of the public believes that tearing down old and historic things to make way for the new is a simple reflection of changing times and needs.

But sometimes procedural hurdles put in place over the past 50 years are the only tools communities have to fend off powerful corporations that have proven themselves willing, over and over, to destroy what people hold dear.

A Special Commentary Project

Civil Beat is focusing on transparency, accountability and ethics in government and other institutions. Help us by sending ideas and anecdotes to sunshine@civilbeat.org.

Read More

In Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump is doing this by seeking to eliminate many steps in the rules known as Section 106. These are the procedures established by the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 that call for community consultation about federal construction projects at historic sites.

First the president replaced the members of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, which oversees preservation review, with his own more pliable crew. Then his appointed vice chair called for an irregular, “non-assembled” meeting to vote by email on a draft proposal that preservationists say would make it much harder to protect significant sites.

This draft proposal calls for consolidating federal control over projects by eliminating the requirement to consult with people affected by development plans, reducing the number of occasions when a Section 106 review is needed and limiting the kinds of places that are considered historic.

“It’s a whole new ballgame,” says Marion Werkheiser, an attorney for Cultural Heritage Partners, a Virginia-based law firm that specializes in preservation. “The draft cuts the public out. People who care about historic places, the organizations who own or steward them, you and me, we no longer have a seat at the table.”

Native Hawaiian sites may be among those at risk, historic preservation experts said Thursday at a webinar organized by the National Trust for Historic Preservation because, like tribal lands, supporters seek to protect not just historic buildings but also historic or sacred landscapes.

The federal government owns about one-fifth of the land in Hawaiʻi and its construction projects have sweeping consequences. These proposed rule changes would allow federal agencies to more easily push ahead with things that they have already indicated they want to do, like tearing down more of the surviving buildings at Ewa Plain Battlefield. Or to move with greater dispatch at demolishing the historic hangars at Marine Corps Base Hawaiʻi in Kāneʻohe.

The Historic Hawaiʻi Foundation, a nonprofit conservation group that often participates in federal Section 106 deliberations, says the proposal would “gut key preservation protections.”

Recent Section 106 projects that went through smoothly with foundation collaboration include conserving the historic bungalows at Ford Island that were attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, preservation work at the USS Arizona, and in dredging and restoration work at Pearl Harbor’s Loko Iʻa Pāʻaiau fishpond.

Honolulu-based architect and preservationist Glenn Mason thinks the federal proposal is a travesty.

“They are doing this to do more development without anybody saying anything,” he said.

On the state level, concerns have been raised about what is happening at Waimānalo, where Gov. Josh Green is pushing forward with plans to build a 116-unit homeless complex on state-owned land without public consultation. Many Hawaiians consider Waimānalo a sacred place with cultural significance because of the area’s association with the earliest Polynesian explorers and because Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, the Hawaiian prince who became a U.S. congressman, had designated Waimānalo to be set aside for Native Hawaiian homesteads.

But construction began there without historic preservation monitoring and many residents are concerned about that, and also about key infrastructure questions that have been left unanswered.

In July 2025, Green signed a controversial measure, Act 293, into law. This eliminates historic preservation review for housing projects unless the construction site is being built atop a property that has been listed on the state or national historic register or where the site was already disturbed. He had indicated he would veto the measure but changed his mind and approved it. 

The nine-member Oʻahu Historic Preservation Commission unanimously opposed the legislation and, in 2026, dozens of land-use and government regulatory organizations and individuals asked the Legislature to overturn it. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs led the charge.

Their proposed remedy was House Bill 2102, which would have clarified the kinds of properties subject to historic review. The legislative record names only one opponent: Ken Hayashida, president of a real estate development group called NAIOP, who said the legislation would undo what he called “the progress” that had been made by passage of Act 293.

Hayashida seems to have had the deciding vote. The legislation died mid-session.

Instead, other so-called “fast-track” legislation was passed this year further streamlining permit approvals, with a goal of making it easier to build housing.

On Tuesday, speaking at the Oʻahu commission, Kamakana Ferreira, an OHA archaeologist, gave a glum overview of why historic preservationists were getting outflanked. He referred to Act 293 as a “gut and replace” bill, a term that refers to wording deceptively placed inside another bill at the last minute. He said that historic preservation advocates had been caught unaware that something of that breadth was even being considered.

He explained that legislators were more interested in speeding development than they were in preserving what is already there. He said OHA will try again next year.

It’s unclear at this point what effect the state rule changes will have on historic preservation, and enforcement details have yet to be determined in the administrative rule-making for Act 293 that still lies ahead.

Green and state legislators say their goal is building more housing more quickly.

Trump, too, wants the right to build more quickly.

On the federal level, opposition to Trump’s rollback of historic preservation is coalescing and dozens of organizations are springing to action. They are calling for voters to watch the draft proposal during the regulatory review process and to write to protest.

The petition route is the course of action here in Hawaiʻi as well. A petition begging Green to stop and reconsider the Waimānalo project has now reached more than 650 signatures.