As the owner of a bar on Lewers Street, I read with trepidation all the ballyhoo and bluster about the thrill of bringing The Trump Towers to Waikiki. All hype with little forethought.

Amidst the growing trend of turning hotels into condo-hotels, I fear for the future viability of Waikiki to sustain a viable nightlife, a nightlife that is a very real and true necessity to sustaining a commercially vibrant Waikiki. Let's face it, people don't go on vacation just to shop or go to the beach, they want an element of fun, clubs with dancing and live music.

If you take a look at what has been occurring throughout Waikiki, you'll see a growing trend of converting existing hotels into condo-hotels. We are allowing residents onto commercially zoned properties, residents who desire the peace and quiet of living in their own home. Yet they are buying on commercial property in the midst of existing and future bars, restaurants and night clubs. They want no disturbances of noise, deliveries, foot traffic, automotive traffic or the confluence of crowds around clubs and bars that are legally doing business within their licensed hours.

Will we allow residents throughout Waikiki in former hotels, thereby condemning those properties within 500 feet for future use as bars, night clubs and restaurants with liquor licenses? Will the city's zoning department, the Waikiki Neighborhood Board and the Liquor Commission hold these condo-hotels to the terms of their condo documents that show they are hotels not residences, or will they bend to the wishes of residents?

The lone residents of the Trump Tower will control every liquor license on Lewers Street in the future, since they are the only residents in a commercial area. If half of a wealthy resident base in that building is opposed to any liquor license on the Waikiki Beach Walk, they can object to it and prevent it. That's right, 500 future residents — most likely not from Hawai'i — will be the controlling interest for every license within 500 feet. Should any restaurant or bar change hands, those residents will have the say as to whether it can open a new liquor establishment.

The idea of grandfathering the commercial zoning is neither practical nor realistic. The Irish Rose, along with all the existing businesses on Lewers Street, lost their leases to the redevelopment. The Irish Rose moved from a commercially zoned Ohana Reef Towers Hotel, containing a liquor license, to the commercially zoned Island Colony Hotel, which had a recent history of a liquor license and was denied a liquor license at a location that has remained empty for more than four years now. The largest factor in denying the license was the objections of "residents," many of whom owned multiple units and voted out of state or even out of the country. They were speculators and not residents.

The Island Colony is a condo-hotel, and says so in its documents, but a vocal number of residents chose to portray themselves as residents in a condo denying it was a hotel. You can't have it both ways. Either you are a resident in a condo or living in a hotel — but not both. If you are living in a commercial zone it should be recognized that commercial interests should have priority. The condo documents should factor in and residents buying in should recognize that they are living in a condo-hotel. Further, government agencies should use the zoning and the condo documents to determine the building's purpose.

This is a bad economic mix when you convert hotels to condos and allow residential developments in commercial areas. You effectively change the zoning by allowing residents to live in commercial areas. Somehow, I know that the Beach Walk Project will get all its liquor licenses despite providing no new parking and before the completion of the Trump Tower and the addition of their residents. But what will happen in the future when any of those businesses are sold? Will we turn Waikiki, our economic engine, into a sleepy little off-island bedroom community shutting down at dusk? I hope not.

Bill Comerford owns a bar in Waikiki.