With rising seas, erosion threatening Pā‘ia Youth & Cultural Center, plans are underway to build new one

PĀ‘IA — On winter days when the surf is especially rough, managing director Benjamin Rachunas starts his day at the Pā‘ia Youth & Cultural Center with a mop and a broom to soak up the water seeping in through the back door.

The pooling seawater is a reminder of the steadily eroding shoreline that has put the high-water mark of the ocean less than 25 feet away from the youth center that hundreds of North Shore kids flock to for programs and activities after school and on their breaks.

That’s why the Pā‘ia Youth Council, the nonprofit that runs the center, is moving forward with efforts to tear down the building and construct a brand-new, two-story center on a more inland site adjacent to the current one. Because it still would be in a flood zone, it will be lifted on concrete pillars.

“Mother Nature is telling us it’s time to start making some plans,” Billy Jalbert, president of the Pā‘ia Youth Council’s board of directors, said Thursday night at an open house about the future center. 

Located at the edge of Pā‘ia town just off Hāna Highway, the youth center has served an estimated 6,000 kids since it was founded in 1993 out of a former sugar plantation workers’ home. It’s a kid’s playhouse dream — home to a skate park, a basketball hoop, pool table and a big-screen TV for limited gaming time. Surfboards line the walls and skate helmets dangle from a line. Upstairs, the youth-run radio station 88.9 FM broadcasts music selected by the kids.

The kids learn to make nutritious meals in the youth center’s certified commercial kitchen and how to throw pottery on a wheel in the art studio. And soon they’ll add a sewing studio designed by one of the kids who loves making her own clothes.

Rachunas said a really great aspect is “all these programs were inspired by the kids and what they want to do.”

Those activities will make their way to the planned new youth center on a half-acre piece of land owned by Maui County. The revamped facility will be about 600 square feet bigger, with 4,300 square feet of interior space for activities, a lounge, art room, broadcast room, kitchen, loft space and a large lanai, as well as offices and restrooms. There also will be a 1,200-square-foot covered deck.

Because the new building will still be in a flood zone, all activities will take place on the second floor and the bottom floor will be reserved for storage, parking or access. There will be a 13-stall parking lot and an on-site retention basin for runoff control, said Rory Frampton of Rory Frampton Consulting, the project’s land use planner.

The project will be privately funded and is expected to cost about $12 million, including construction, demolition and “soft costs” such as design and permitting, said Alika Romanchak of project consultant Romanchak Architecture.

Romanchak, whose great-grandparents were one of the earliest families to live in the structure, said the hope is to get building permits this year and start construction in 2027, with potential completion in 2028. 

The current center will continue operating during construction and won’t be demolished until the new one is built, Rachunas said. 

Time is key — while the coastal erosion hasn’t affected programs yet, Rachunas said “fast forward 10 years, it’s going to be a problem.” Just down the road, coastal erosion claimed the pavilion at Baldwin Beach Park in 2024. At the opposite end of Pā‘ia town, gravestones at the Pā‘ia Mantokuji Soto Zen Mission’s cemetery have been falling into the ocean for years. 

The youth center keeps sandbags up for most of the winter. And Rachunas recalled during one of the bigger storm swells last year, a wave crashed over the dunes and wrapped around the building, flooding the front yard. Video footage showed the wave had even splashed into the second story window. 

“If those dunes weren’t here, that wash would have been clear across the road,” said Rachunas, who’s worked at the youth center since 2005. 

Jalbert, who’s served on the board for 23 years, remembers ironwood trees that used to be in front of the center but eventually fell down and were swept away. 

Some of the erosion has been stymied by dune restoration efforts two decades ago that focused on removing invasive species and replanting vegetation to help hold the sand in place, Jalbert said. 

“It really has helped very dramatically all along Pā‘ia Bay there,” Jalbert said. “But the bottom line is that the sea rising and encroaching is inevitable.”

Talks to relocate the center have been going on for decades, and one resident at the open house expressed disappointment that it hadn’t happened sooner. Jalbert said that 20 years ago, the youth center approached A&B Properties with a proposal to buy the land the center was located on. However, at the time, A&B was negotiating with Maui County and eventually went on to donate the land to the county, which now leases the 0.9-acre site to the youth center. 

The COVID-19 pandemic slowed negotiations with the county for a new 50-year lease, and by the time they finally got one hammered out and started plans to fundraise for a new center, the Lahaina and Kula fires hit in August 2023. Jalbert said they felt like a capital campaign was “the last thing in the world we should be doing.” So, they kept planning in the background until they felt like enough support had mounted for the fire-ravaged communities that they could kickstart their own fundraising efforts. The center is beginning the third year of its 50-year lease.

The project’s draft environmental assessment was posted for public comment on Dec. 8 in “The Environmental Notice.” It’s expected to come before the Urban Design Review Board on Feb. 3 and the Maui Planning Commission on Feb. 24, Frampton said.

Jalbert said over the next quarter, the youth center will be preparing to launch a fundraising campaign. He said the project is expensive because it’s being designed for a flood zone. It will have features like “breakaway walls” on the ground level that would detach to limit damage to the main structure and let water pass through during a major flood. Frampton also said the project site is behind the erosion hazard line and the 200-foot shoreline setback mapped out by the state and the county.

When asked if it was better to build outside of the flood zone, Jalbert said the center would “lose the magic of the beach.”

“There’s not a place in Pā‘ia that’s makai of Hāna Highway that would be available to us where we’d be able to do that,” Jalbert said. “And so, you change that, and you change the whole nature of the youth center.”

Thorne Abbott, president of the Wailuku firm Coastal Planners, said while “avoidance” is usually the best solution when it comes to coastal erosion and flooding, it’s technically permissible to build in the flood zone as long as the structure follows standards like being elevated a certain height above expected flood levels. 

“You can build in the flood zone — you just have to build differently,” Abbott said. “Just like you can build in a place that’s susceptible to earthquakes — you just have to build differently.”

Abbott said planning based on sea level rise predictions and restoration of sand dunes are crucial measures in coping with the erosion that has taken its toll along the North Shore and other coastal communities around Maui. He said relocating the youth center “is a very smart choice.”

“Do I think it would be better to relocate it somewhere else? Sure, it probably would be, but that’s probably not necessarily viable in this case,” Abbott said. “They also wouldn’t have access to the ocean, which is a big part of the use of it.”

For the kids who come to the youth center, the beachfront location is the whole point of its charm, especially the annual Pā‘ia Bay Beachfest, a two-day surf competition set for Jan. 24-25.

Ten-year-old Dayton Yamashita said he’s “not really happy” to see the current facility go. “I love this place,” he said.

The young bodyboarder said “it’s so easy” to just grab a board and run out to the ocean from the center. He and his friends base their plans on how the surf looks that day. 

“If it’s big, then we’ll go bodyboard. If it’s small, then we’ll go skate,” he said. “Or if the skate park is small, we’ll maybe just swim or just go walk around town.”

Twenty-four-year-old staff member Antonio Mason said Yamashita “reminds me of a little me when I was here.” Mason’s memories of the youth center revolve around “peanut butter jellies, surfing and a few photos in between.” When he wasn’t in the water, he was in the media lab learning about surf photography. 

“At that age, all it was to me was like hanging out with my friends, surfing, bodyboarding,” Mason said. “There was always food in the kitchen. If you didn’t bring money, bust out a rake. You can get some food, just act like you really want it.”

Mason is now the Project Venture program specialist and helps plan field trips mixed with community service. Recently the kids went on a fishing trip to Kīhei that included cleanup and restoration work in the wetlands. This week they’re playing frisbee golf and helping maintain the course at Polipoli. 

He said the experiences he had growing up at the youth center gave him “so many amazing opportunities that I now realize are my outlets.” Now he mentors kids like himself, and he’s channeled his passion for photography and videography into a side hustle shooting weddings and other content. 

“Coming back full circle, I didn’t realize the importance of those connections within the community until I came back as a facilitator,” Mason said.

Trisha Smith, better known as radio DJ and music journalist “Trish Da Dish,” is also going to miss the current center where she serves as the manager and program specialist of RadiOpio. Her workplace digs include a music room with a piano, guitars and drums, and a small broadcasting studio stacked with CDs, microphones, computer monitors and small touches left by the kids like a squishy boba light.

Smith said she loves seeing the kids overcome their nerves and find their voice on the radio, especially those who are more introverted at home or school. On Wednesdays, it’s “Girl Power Day,” and they play nothing but songs by female powerhouses like Paula Fuga and Aretha Franklin.

“It’s all about them being confident, building character, and music is a really great way to do that,” Smith said. 

Smith said in a world driven by artificial intelligence, there’s something special about getting kids to put down their smartphones and tune in to a more classic form of media like radio. 

“They want to know who the Beatles are, they want to hear about Green Day, they think the Gorillaz are older music, like, it’s wild,” Smith said. “So my thing is getting that phone out of their hand and getting them to talk about something that’s not necessarily from AI. … And then they come in here, and they’re naturally speaking from their heart, and they want to create something.”

Jalbert said the youth center has grown from serving 100 to 200 kids annually to anywhere from 300 to 600 depending on the year. He said having the space to expand is an important part of relocating the center. 

And while the winter waves may create headaches for Rachunas and his mop until the center relocates, the kids will keep soaking up the surf and enjoying the current space as much as they can.

“We got waves Saturday, bring your board down,” Mason said as Yamashita headed out to meet his ride on Thursday night.  

“Like big kine?” Yamashita asked, pausing in the doorway. 

“Big enough, yeah,” Mason said. “It’s small now, but Saturday will be different.”