Kaiminani Drive work ‘slow and meticulous’

Construction workers are about 20 percent finished with the second phase of a project to reconstruct more than a mile of Kaiminani Drive.

Contractor Nan Inc. is working to relocate private rock walls and create catch basins and plumbing in the flood-prone area between Ahiahi Street and Ane Keohokalole Highway, said Warren Lee, director of the Hawaii County Department of Public Works. The county gave the notice to proceed on the project last August, and the project is expected to wrap up in September 2016 at a cost of $16.9 million.

The street will be resurfaced at a later date, Lee said. That reconstruction process will involve replacing the subgrade with a thicker material, improving road shoulders and tying driveways to the new roadway.

“It’s more difficult to do this type of reconstruction than it is to build a new road,” Lee said.

Contractors have to work around traffic, utilities and existing structures like the mailboxes and some walls that they are now laboring to relocate, Lee said.

“This type of work is slow and expensive,” Lee said. “You have to be really meticulous.”

A first phase of the project on the mauka end of the drive from Ahiahi Street to Highway 190 concluded last July at a cost of $8.3 million.

Kaiminani Drive is a major North Kona mauka-makai connector near Kona International Airport. The roadway gets heavy use, and residents of Kona Palisades Estates wrote letters to the county in 2010 asking for the resurfacing work.