Civil Beat drone footage captured video of excavators discarding parts of the interior of the original 1914 power station, once the world's largest wireless communications center.
Questions are being raised about what’s happening behind the guarded gate at a remote site in Kahuku, home to a registered national historic landmark that is now gutted and roofless.
Behind prominent warnings that the site is a “controlled access zone” and amid no-trespassing signs, a nearly 100-acre parcel of oceanfront land zoned for agricultural uses houses a complex of buildings recognized as representing a time more than a century ago when Hawaii was at the forefront of the global wireless communications revolution.
The scenic property about a half-mile off Kamehameha Highway adjacent to Turtle Bay Resort was the focus of a multi-party agreement in 2021 that provided a federal loan guarantee allowing construction to go forward in exchange for a pledge to preserve the historic buildings at the property’s core, known as the Marconi Wireless Telegraphy Station.
It is named for an Italian engineer who pioneered wireless communications and helped make it possible for people to share ideas over vast distances.
In the 1910s, the Kahuku site was “host to the largest and most powerful Marconi station on the planet,” wrote Tyler Morgenstern, a scholar who has studied the history of wireless communications.
In that era, “Hawaii’s successful installation and use of the wireless telegraph placed the islands on the cutting edge of this form of communication,” wrote Don Hibbard, former administrator of the Hawaii State Historic Preservation Division, in the application for the property’s inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. The property became a national landmark the next year.
The Marconi Point land has been divided into individual plots sold off to more than a dozen owners, many of them operating under the names of trusts or limited liability corporations. The land is supposed to be used only for agricultural purposes, including farm product warehouses and some limited residential uses.
The historic core of the property and some of the oceanfront land was purchased last year by Las Vegas-based tech entrepreneur Sushil Garg.
After reports of heavy construction equipment rumbling in and out of the property in the past two months, the Historic Hawaii Foundation, a preservation advocacy group, has requested an investigation by the state attorney general and the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. The Honolulu Historic Preservation Commission has asked city staff to look into the situation.
“DLNR is investigating the alleged violations, and thus cannot comment further at this time,” said Ryan Aguilar, a DLNR spokesman. The Attorney General’s office declined comment.
Drone video footage taken by Civil Beat found that demolition activity was underway at the site during Christmas week. The footage, taken early Dec. 23, shows heavy construction equipment, including two large yellow bucket excavators, moving piles of debris around a crumbling, heavily damaged historic structure, discarding the material into a dump truck and a dumpster:
The building, the once-grand powerhouse, appears to have been recently gutted and is now an open, roofless box. This apparently happened sometime after Oct. 18, when Civil Beat last visited the site amid reports of destruction of native vegetation and the habitat of the endangered Hawaiian yellow-faced bee. At that time, property owners were cited for conservation violations.
“There should not be any work being done in the core historic district zone.”
Kiersten Faulkner, Hawaii Historic Foundation
The 110-year-old building, though clearly showing signs of decay, appeared intact not long ago. Aerial footage from the auction that preceded Garg’s purchases last year showed a less dilapidated structure. In an advertisement from January 2022, which also showed an enclosed roof, the property was promoted as a “steal,” with almost 29 acres and 848 feet of ocean frontage, at a reserve price of $15 million.
Environment Hawaii, a conservation-focused newsletter that has written extensively about the Marconi property, has reported that Garg acquired more than 35 acres of the land last year at a cost of about $10 million, through purchases made by various entities, including Greystone HI Investments, BSS HI Properties and LKG HI Properties.
Kalani Morse, Garg’s attorney, said Friday that the tech entrepreneur had decided to remove the internal girders at the original powerhouse because they were rusty and mangled and he believed the structure was in danger of collapsing. Morse said that “all that iron got hauled out” in the demolition.
“They were concerned about further damage happening and unsafe conditions,” he said.
Morse said that Garg halted the work after receiving “communication” from government officials. He said that no further work is underway.
“Communication is going on,” Morse said, adding that Garg eventually intends to restore the historic site.
Kiersten Faulkner, chief executive of the Historic Hawaii Foundation, said the demolition and debris removal work that she saw on the video was “a blatant violation” of the terms of the contractual historic preservation agreement made between government officials and the property’s developers in 2021. Under the terms of a memorandum of agreement between the original developer, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and state historic preservation officials, property owners on the site were required to preserve and protect the historic buildings, making any changes only under the guidance of “historic preservation professionals.”
“There should not be any work being done in the core historic district zone,” Faulkner said. She said the agreement requires a historic district preservation and treatment plan, which must be reviewed by the State Historic Preservation Division and provided to Historic Hawaii Foundation for review and comment prior to any work being done.
She said that no plans had been provided to the foundation.
The agreement had specific provisions for emergency situations, requiring property owners to inform federal and state officials immediately if events occurred that posed a public health or safety threat and to consult with them about actions taken.
The project’s original developer, Jeremiah Henderson, operating under the corporate name of Makai Ranch, agreed to the memo of agreement in the course of obtaining a federal guarantee for a $7.5 million loan that he used for site construction.
In an emailed statement, Ross Uehara-Tilton, an attorney for Henderson, said that the historic preservation memo of understanding was binding on the entire property, including the lots owned by Garg.
Uehara-Tilton said he did not know who was responsible for the demolition activities shown in the drone video, but that it was not his client. He said that Henderson no longer owns sites there.
“Makai Ranch does not condone any construction work that violates any applicable law, any form of the MOA, or any other restriction applicable to the property,” he wrote.
A spokesman for the Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting said that the city received a complaint that work was being done at the location without a permit, but that the owner asked to be allowed to continue to do “emergency repair work” at the historic structure. An inspector determined that the value of the work was less than $10,000, so city officials decided the activity was not a violation of law.
But department officials determined that no further work should be done because permit applications for historic sites are supposed to be reviewed by the State Historic Preservation Division, and it was not clear that the work would be approved.
“A representative of the owner was notified of the denial and informed DPP that no work will be done until a permit is granted,” said Curtis Lum, a DPP spokesman, in an email. He said the city will continue to monitor the situation.
Construction of the Marconi power station in Kahuku was a landmark event, because the arrival of the telegraph was an epic change for Hawaii. The island chain’s great isolation from other land masses had long been an obstacle for people who wanted to know what was happening elsewhere. It took Polynesians weeks or months to arrive in Hawaii from other island groups. When Kamehameha II died in London in 1824, it took eight months for the people of Hawaii to learn their king was dead.
But the world began growing smaller as sailing vessels were replaced by steamships, allowing mail, passengers and newspapers to move more quickly. Then inventor Samuel Morse, a painter with ties to Hawaii, devised and popularized the telegraph in the 1830s, which allowed messages to fly on electric wires via Morse code.
Morse’s new gizmo drew attention in Hawaii, which became an early adopter of the technology. Efforts to link the islands telegraphically began in 1887, during the reign of King David Kalakaua, but difficulties in laying cable between the islands proved insurmountable at first.
The development of a wireless telegraph by a young Italian named Guglielmo Marconi, a system that didn’t need cables, soon presented a new way to speedily connect the islands with each other, Asia and America’s West Coast. Marconi became intrigued by the idea of using Hawaii, a place with an exotic appeal to him, as a proving ground for his invention.
“Hawaii was important to Marconi’s development of practical wireless communication,” wrote Marc Raboy, author of a well-regarded biography of Marconi. “The company’s early installations had both experimental and commercial value. Marconi pioneered inter-island wireless communication as early as 1899, later building the state-of-the-art international station that opened in 1914. The Marconi company was, of course, working all over the world by this time and Hawaii was central to its plans for the development of a global network.”
The Kahuku facility was a major investment. At a cost of about $1 million — some $31 million today adjusted for inflation, construction began in 1913 and was completed the next year. The complex consisted of a group of buildings, including a hotel, an administrative building, a manager’s residence and the power station itself, crowned by a network of eight giant masts soaring 425 feet high. It was the largest telegraph station in the world in terms of capacity and power, according to Hibbard.
The outbreak of World War I complicated matters because the federal government seized the Marconi station for military purposes. By the time the property was returned to its owner, the equipment was already growing obsolete as technology hop-scotched ahead and the company faced new competition in the market. The station, once heralded as one of the most important sources of global linkages in the world, was viewed as a white elephant within a decade of its completion.
The property, which by now was owned by Marconi’s American successor, the Radio Corporation of America, or RCA, was seized once again by the U.S. government during World War II, where it was augmented with an airstrip and other military facilities. It finally shut down in 1978, with the property ending up in the hands of a subsidiary of the James Campbell estate. Only four buildings remain, including the three-story power house and operations building where demolition was visible over Christmas.
Henderson bought the original 97-acre property in 2005, soon naming it Makai Ranch, but also operating under the names Marconi Farms and RCA Trade Center. In 2009, he organized the property into a agricultural condominium structure, and over the years, all of the lots have gradually been sold off. He had the property nominated to the National Register of Historic Places.
This is not the only alleged land-use violation at the Marconi Point site. In October, a group of 15 property owners at the Marconi Point site received citations from DLNR for reportedly removing native vegetation and trees, including a habitat for an endangered species of Hawaiian yellow-faced bees. DLNR took action after reports that work crews had been seen removing naupaka shrubs and heliotrope trees with machetes and chainsaws. The landowners could face fines of up to $15,000 for each violation.
On Dec. 4, the city of Honolulu issued a notice of violation and a stop-work order on the site for “grubbing without a permit.” Grubbing refers to the process of clearing vegetation and plants.
The city identified seven owners at Marconi Point, including three firms led by Garg. They face fines of at least $200, with an additional fine of $100 a day if no corrective action is taken. The owners were told to take immediate measures to stabilize the site.
Lum, the DPP spokesman, said that the city continues to monitor the situation.
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