If you compared a Google Earth photo of Kaka'ako from 2002, it'd be pretty much the same today. A seven-year itch with no relief.

Kamehameha Schools has been planning to build the Asia Pacific Innovation Center, or APIC, as a home for tech there since the medical school broke ground in 2002. But as the dealerships send up their balloons and the weeds blow gently from CompUSA to Point Panic, APIC has become a distant memory.

It's 2009. Can there be life for APIC?

CADMAN'S CAMELOT

Ed Cadman, earlier dean of the John A. Burns School of Medicine, or JABSOM, is one of our greatest heroes. His leadership kick started Kaka'ako. He gets the credit for putting things in motion. He disrupted the junkyard with a new vision. It crossed the heavens, but then got stuck, unrealized.

Kaka'ako had real prospect when JABSOM opened. The other projects planned around JABSOM, including JABSOM II, the Cancer Research Center and the Regional Biosafety Lab, would have become Cadman's Camelot. But under University of Hawai'i leadership, none of them got off the ground.

The Alexander & Baldwin condo project at Point Panic distracted everyone from the surfers to the Legislature, and public interest in a biotech campus reverted back to our land-based economy. Had the campus taken shape, Kamehameha Schools might have gone ahead with APIC. But it didn't.

MOVING MAUKA

APIC was ambitious. It was to be built on 5 acres in two phases, one for 150,000 square feet and the second for 250,000. Kamehameha Schools said there would have been 1,200 jobs at APIC.

At first, APIC was for the Kamehameha Schools kids and their future, but when Camelot ended it went to something less altruistic: feasibility. Kamehameha Schools and its consultants, contractors, brokers, even its architects, asked the tech industry, "If we build it, will you come?" The answers were not reassuring enough to find feasibility. APIC stayed on the shelf.

Kamehameha Schools is now promoting another project in Kaka'ako mauka. It will be a 29-acre mix of residential, commercial, retail and office, working on the concept of "live, work, shop and play." It's not intended as a shopping destination, but to support workers from APIC. It's also ambitious, with 2,750 residential units starting in 2012.

NEW SYNERGIES

Kamehameha Schools says it wants to break ground on APIC next year. It says it is depending on this mauka project to offset the feasibility risks it will incur on APIC, so if it can't go ahead with the mauka project, it won't do APIC either. Kamehameha Schools says these projects are synergistic — APIC will provide jobs for residents in the mauka project, and the mauka project will provide homes for APIC workers.

But how will this synergy be maintained? Will Kamehameha Schools keep prices low enough to attract these workers? Will the workers be able to find homes in the mauka project? This hypothetical synergy can easily decouple. There must be a mechanism to preserve it. Should we rely on Kamehameha Schools to create this mechanism, or should the Hawai'i Community Development Authority, the state agency for Kaka'ako, do it instead?

MORE AFFORDABLES

The current affordable housing rules require a developer to offer 20 percent of his units as "reserved" or "affordable." Prices for these units cannot exceed 140 percent of the $72,000 mean income in the community, typically well below fair market value.

There are several affordable housing developers in Hawai'i. They develop lower cost housing for lower prices but they are in business to make a profit like any other developer.

They want the Legislature to pass SB 1350 to require more affordable housing in Kaka'ako. One draft going to conference would require 50 percent of the floor space of a project to be affordable. Since much of the Kamehameha Schools mauka project is commercial, this would require 80 percent of the 2,750 units, or 2,200 affordable units. That would leave only 550 units for sale at market. Talk about feasibility problems.

Rep. Karl Rhoads introduced the companion bill. He feels that units at market are above what ordinary people can pay and that affordable units in Kaka'ako are the perfect solution for those who work in Waikiki or Downtown. Given Kamehameha Schools' need to make a return, this is a great opportunity but it could wind up in stalemate.

Would the mauka project work if 80 percent of the units are affordable? That's unlikely — they tried 60 percent during the Waihee administration and that didn't work at all. Kamehameha Schools says the tradeoffs would turn some of the most attractive real estate in the city into a marginal neighborhood that no one would like, with a huge gap between prices. If SB 1350 is passed, Kamehameha Schools has said it will put everything off, including the mauka project, the affordable units and APIC too.

FINDING OURSELVES

Planning-wise, our city still doesn't know what it wants to be. What we do in Kaka'ako could set a new standard for the city. Much of O'ahu's housing is old and inadequate and will need to be rebuilt. What happens in Kaka'ako could be the model for height, setback, design, streets, traffic flow and everything else, so we can't afford to make mistakes.

Right now, Kaka'ako is a dead end at the city's center. It has no personality or vitality. It's an example of what happens when we don't collaborate. This is a time for catch-up collaboration among stakeholders. However haphazard things have been in the past, this is the time to make a neighborhood. For Kaka'ako, we need city planning at a level we have never had before.

Rather than fighting old wars, landowners and affordable developers need to come to reasonable terms — a bill that requires 80 percent to be affordable units is not reasonable. This kind of legislative sport is one reason why Kaka'ako is still barren. The Legislature should broker, not cram down, an affordable housing requirement that is reasonable in the current market.

CAN SCIENCE RETURN?

The tech industry still wants to see APIC built. It would be a magnet and an affirmation of tech in Hawai'i. The High Technology Development Corp. would put its headquarters there. Honolulu Seawater Air Conditioning would put its pumping station there. Many local and offshore tech companies would also be thrilled to locate there. Kamehameha Schools will have to work hard, but with reasonable rates it could fill the place up.

Kamehameha Schools' mauka project could connect with Downtown, Waterfront Plaza, JABSOM, and Kaka'ako Park as well as APIC and the shopping centers. If done right, it could create a core cosmopolitan neighborhood, with apartments and shops for sale and rent, walking streets, bike paths and green spaces. It could be an exciting, vibrant community, our own "midtown," far more livable than Waikiki.

After 30 years of trying, let's finally get down to building Kaka'ako, recognizing the long-range stimulus it will provide for tech and the economy.

Let's do it not only for Ed Cadman, but for ourselves.