Investigation: The $24 Million Plan To Kill Shark’s Cove
Eight local businesses sit in the crosshairs of the North Shore’s Karen-Elite.
In 2024, Koa Rothman woke up on the sand at Pipeline.
21 stitches to the head and one concussion later, he only remembers going on a normal-sized wave on a normal-sized winter day and hitting his head on the bottom.
If it weren’t for Luke Shepardson — North Shore lifeguard and 2023 Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational winner — who swam out to rescue Koa and brought him in to shore to be resuscitated, Koa might have died.
“The lifeguards saved my life; they deserve everything,” Koa said. “They’re the best in the world. Whatever they need, they should get it. And if a first responder hub is what they say they need, then they should have it. They save lives every year, and besides that, they are our friends and an integral part of this community. The thing is, most of the lifeguards I’ve talked to want a compromise where the local businesses at Sharks Cove can exist alongside it.”
What is Koa referring to?
In June, Honolulu city officials announced that a deal had been made that would allocate $24 million of taxpayer money to construct an “ocean safety hub” at Sharks Cove, currently home to eight businesses, including Liam McNamara’s North Shore Surf Shop (which has been there for 25 years), Koa Rothman’s own Sunrise Shack coffee shop, three much-loved restaurants, and other locally owned boutique-style stores. Instead of allowing the businesses to remain, the City said that when the deal is finalized, the City would “help them” relocate within 90 days.
The details around what the “ocean safety hub” actually is are vague. No architectural plans have been revealed, and the particulars of how the hub will help lifeguards have also not been publicly revealed. All that is known is that it costs $24 million, will take place on the 2.7-acre property, and that currently all eight businesses are slated to be relocated by the City.
“There are very few food options on the North Shore as is,” Sunrise Shack founder and co-owner Travis Smith said. “And there are fewer jobs. A lot of local kids out here get their first jobs at these shops. If we get kicked out, the North Shore is going to lose up to 100 jobs and $300,000 in taxes that the businesses here generate for the entire community. The eight businesses aren’t tourist traps; they are a key part of the North Shore. During the Kona Low floods, all of us donated food to feed people who lost their homes; I mean, Seven Brothers next door donated thousands of burgers to people.”
Travis and Koa continued by saying that the goal for the eight businesses at Sharks Cove isn’t to stop the first responder hub from going up, but to make room for both. “The businesses here only take up 40% of the land parcel. And if this ocean safety hub is going to help lifeguards do their job better and keep the North Shore safer, we want that to go up too,” Travis said. “Have you seen the setups lifeguards have in Australia? The government really takes care of them over there. We want to give our lifeguards whatever they need, but none of the lifeguards we know even understand what this ocean safety hub is, and they’d rather all that money toward things that are more practical.”
To get one lifeguard’s perspective, we phoned up former pro surfer and now-20-year North Shore Lifeguards veteran Kyle Foyle.
“First things first, I’m speaking for myself here as Kyle, a citizen, and not for North Shore Lifeguards as a whole. That being clearly said, I think the money could have been used better elsewhere. $24 million dollars? Are you kidding me?” Kyle said. “We currently don’t have towers at some of the most dangerous and crowded beaches on the North Shore like Keikis. We could have had new lifesaving equipment, new trucks, jetskis that work, we could hire more guards, we could pay our current employees more.
“If the government came to us as lifeguards and told us that there’s $24 million for us, we would’ve been thrilled and we could’ve told them exactly what we needed it for,” Kyle said. “But I’m a lieutenant here, I’ve been here for 20 years. I never got asked about this ocean safety hub once. We haven’t even been told what it’s going to be for. I’ve talked to the other veteran lifeguards here as well, none of them got asked for their opinions on it either.
“I mean, this is taxpayer money,” Kyle continued. “Some single mom on eastside is paying it, some family in Kahuku, a guy in Town, it’s the people’s money and in my opinion there are better uses for it. There just seems to be a disconnect with Honolulu politicians in terms of what we need out here on the North Shore. I just don’t think they talked to the every-day, boots-on-the-ground first responders out here when they made this decision for us. I mean, my teenage son was probably going to get his first job at one of these businesses at Sharks Cove. These are key businesses in the community and friends of lifeguards. This whole thing is just a weird use of money. There’s gotta be a compromise.”
So, if local North Shore sentiment is confused about the first responder hub and upset about their local businesses being torn down, where did this whole $24 million project come from? Travis, Koa, and two other prominent North Shore locals who would like to remain anonymous all pointed to the same hypothesis.
“There is a Facebook group of a bunch of wealthy, older people who aren’t from Hawai’i but who have recently moved to the North Shore. They are ex-real estate developers, businesspeople, a lawyer from D.C., who have been working to get the businesses shut down at Sharks Cove for a few years now,” Koa said. “I’ve been on city council Zoom meetings with them. They live kind of near Sharks Cove and they just hate the foot traffic, car traffic, and attention that the businesses bring. And this isn’t their first crusade, last year they tried to argue for closing some beaches on the North Shore during the summertime. They just want things to be quiet and nice and posh here but they are clever about it and always try to argue for things citing ‘environmental’ or ‘public safety’ reasons to city council without providing evidence for it. For example, two years ago, they were the ones who successfully got our local DIY skatepark destroyed citing public safety, even though it’s things like that are good for the community and keep local kids out of trouble.”
[We tried tracking down and reaching out to the Facebook group for comment, to no avail.]
“It’s like that South Park ‘Mahalo Rewards Card’ episode out here,” laughs Koa. “I talked to Sean Quinlan, who is one of our Hawai’i State Representatives, to see how this ocean safety hub project even happened under our noses and he said that these people, this group of Facebook Karens, just keep calling the City every single day non-stop and are smart about it and have it to the point where the City genuinely thinks this is what the North Shore wants. The Karens have basically persuaded the City that they would be heroes to spend money on a first responder hub when the real point of what they’re doing is to slyly get what they’ve always wanted which is to kick these local businesses out of here. It’s funny though, this group loves the Foodland here at Sharks Cove, and that place price gouges us locals to no end because of how remote the North Shore is. It’s all just fucked up.”
That being said, Koa, Travis and the locals we spoke to aren’t trying to get the project shut down. They don’t want to get in the way of the government helping lifeguards in any way. The key for them is compromise: Build the Ocean Safety Hub with the 60% of the land parcel that is currently unoccupied, and let the businesses stay.
“All we’re asking for is for the businesses to be able to stay alongside the ocean safety hub,” Travis said. “At the very least, let us stay until construction begins. Currently there are no plans, no drawings, no timeline. They’ve just said they’ll let us know when we have 90 days to leave. Like things are with politics in Hawai’i, it’s all been very sneaky, behind-closed-doors, where a few wealthy, educated people who are good at persuading those in power are making it seem like the whole North Shore wants this, when really just they do. But, at the end of the day, we just want compromise: We want our lifeguards to have what they need and we want these important eight businesses to survive. There’s more than enough land. We can do both.”
[You can sign the petition for the Sharks Cove compromise here]
