US Army Real Estate Holdings in Hawaii

Editor's Notes

• #2: Team effort. Vicky Teeters single-handedly figured out how to do this project and stuck with it from cradle to grave. Believe it or not the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has a real estate office because we are, in fact, the official keepers of the Army’s real estate records. So, of course, they were a big part of this project.
• #4: This project came about at the request of the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management and is an Army-wide effort to bring real estate information into the 21st century. We are converting paper records to a robust, authoritative database, the Real Estate Management Information System, also called REMIS. Eventually REMIS will become geospatial, so they asked us to map tracts in a GIS.
• #5: This project was broken into tasks. Task 1 is to review the real estate files and gather all of the necessary information to update REMIS which is Task 2. These two tasks assure data quality. That information is provided to the GIS folks to map the tracts which is Task 3, and then at the end of the project, we submit the data for publication which is Task 4, assuring that the data is shared with the people that need it.
• #6: When you think of Army sites, you probably think first of Fort Shafter or Schofield Barracks. Maybe you even think of Tripler. But there are numerous other sites on Oahu and the Big Island that have significant Army real estate interest.
• #7: There are actually almost 30 Army sites, each with their own real estate history and interest.
• #9: I want to emphasize the latter part of the definition – less than fee can mean a sewer line easement underneath the freeway or an agreement to use a road for access to an Army site. It does not necessarily mean the Army has bought the land. And since tracts make up an Army site, our sites, by definition, include less-than-fee areas. I also want to emphasize longterm because short term real estate transactions are not part of this project.
• #10: The first bullet is worth emphasizing. Again, we were tasked to map fee and less-than-fee interests, so our sites include easements across roads, underneath freeways, and even through private lands without regard for TMK boundaries.
• #11: Here’s an example showing Tract 10 in pink. It consists of TMK 111-035-002 and part of 111-035-001. It also consists of Lots 1345 and 3762 from the Land Court System. It was also called Tracts KED-3 and KED-6 in a former life.
• #14: Here’s an example of a project map for Fort Shafter. These maps are a reflection of the real estate inventory of an entire site. This map was last updated in 1983 so does not reflect any real estate actions since then. They are hand drawn and other than being scanned, are not in a digital format. Now, I’m not going to try to orient you because this is a very confusing map, but I will explain the parts of the map to illustrate the detail. First, there’s the island index which shows where on the island of Oahu the site occurs. The segment index just above that shows that this site is mapped on two sheets and this is the first sheet. The border information tells you all about the site and the acquisition register lists all of the tracts. The footnotes include all of the disposal information. Active tracts are shown without shading, and disposals are shown with various shading. We could digitize from this map, but the complexity of the active and disposed tracts is hard to tease out at this scale. In essence, the AMLT project was to convert all of the tabular information into REMIS and the geometry into a GIS.
• #15: The second segment shows mostly a disposal of a large portion of the base in 1983.
• #16: You also sometimes see an entire sheet devoted to the Tract Register, which is a list of tracts that make up a site. In this case, the first page of the Fort Shafter Project Map consists of just this tract register.
• #17: Here’s the georeferenced project map with the result of our mapping exercise. We did not necessarily digitize from the project map in this case, but it provided a good quality check for other sources.
• #18: Here’s an example of a more recent survey that helped inform this this project. This boundary study was commissioned to be a snapshot of the boundary of Fort Shafter for encroachment and other boundary issues. It does a really good job of helping us identify the perimeter of Fort Shafter. This is a really recent project, and we were able to pull the CAD lines directly into GIS and preserve the accuracy and precision of the boundary study. However, this does not give us a complete picture because it doesn’t include all of the interior tracts nor disposals.
• #19: This is one page from a real estate file. Some of the files can be hundreds of pages and cover several tracts. This one covers several tracts as evidenced by a handwritten note at the bottom of the page that says Tracts C, 8, 9, 10, and 11-E. We need to go through the document to tease apart the tracts and map them properly.
• #20: As mentioned earlier, Tract 10 in Fort Shafter is formerly known as Tract KED-3 and KED-6. So, locating the description for those two tracts, you can COGO tract 10.
• #21: Here’s the second page of the description of Tract KED-3, and the final course shows the approximate acreage which is a good check for us when COGOing.
• #23: Originally called Kahauiki
• #24: Here’s what the original base looked like with one tract and ~1,300 acres. Notice it is one contiguous piece of land. Back then, it didn’t have a freeway going through it, although King Street did go through it in that location. In subsequent slides I’m going to zoom into the main portion of the base so we can really see what’s going on. Notice the notch for the arsenal.
• #25: Thanks to Benton for these georeferenced 1927 photographs. Here’s historic Palm Circle which still exists on Fort Shafter. The photos show King street running through Fort Shafter where the current Moanalua Frwy is. Tripler Hospital used to be located on Fort Shafter just south of King Street. Notice the fishpond adjacent to the Flats. The main change in configuration of the base from 1899 is that the notch for the arsenal is gone meaning that portion of the base was transferred to the Territory of Hawaii.
• #26: By 1949 King Street had changed to Moanalua Rd and was widened causing the disposal of the road by the base so that the Flats were now separated from the main portion of the base. Tripler Hospital still exists just south of Moanalua Rd, and the H building has been built. The Flats have also expanded where the fishpond was filled in. You can see Kamehameha Hwy on the very bottom of the photograph where H-1 exists today.
• #27: By 1955 the arsenal had been reacquired by Fort Shafter and some more changes/fill around the Fort Shafter Flats area.
• #28: By 1969, a lot of changes had occurred. The Moanalua Frwy was built, Tripler Hospital moved to its current location, the disposal of the Fort Shafter Elementary School to the State of Hawai‘i, and the acquisition of Tract 10 which I talked about earlier. Now, keep your eye on the upper mauka portion of the base unless you want to see the changes around the freeway.
• #29: Today, the configuration includes two clearly distinct sites separated by a Frwy yet connected with various easements (water, sewer, electrical, communications). 750 acres of the mauka portion of the main base was disposed in 1983.
• #30: Here’s the result of our effort for Fort Shafter. You’ll notice that the original PEO for Fort Shafter, which is now called Tract A, went way up mauka, paralleling the Likelike for quite a ways. Most of this was disposed in 1983, but is still reflected on some maps.
• #31: Zooming in to the main portion of the base, you can see Tract A in blue spanned across Moanalua Rd, but portions needed to be disposed when the road was widened to make room for the freeway. In addition, Fort Shafter Flats on the south side of the freeway was expanded several times. A portion of Tract A in the main part of the base was transferred to the Hawaii Arsenal, and then transferred back to Fort Shafter as Tract H.
• #32: A lot of you may be wondering if we can update the TMK layer with our data. While we’re happy to share our data with the public, the comparison is not apples to apples. That’s because our Army sites are including less-than-fee tracts. That is, our military sites depicted in blue, include easements across non-Federally owned TMKs to connect one property to another. For example, Fort Shafter is connected to Fort Shafter Flats via several easements across Moanalua Frwy that are barely visible at this scale, but still considered part of the Fort Shafter site in Army speak. In addition, Mokumoa Street bisects Fort Shafter Flats and is considered part of the Army site, but not in the TMK world because the TMK goes beyond the Flats. You’ll notice the mismatch of the boundary in the mauka area. This is a relict of the TMK layer that we can not correct. We have much more confidence in our site boundary because it was recently surveyed.
• #33: Back in the beginning of my presentation, I talked about there being almost 30 Army sites across the State of Hawaii. Most of them occur on Oahu, and they are mapped here.
• #34: Here they are with labels.
• #35: On the big island, the main Army site is Pohakuloa.
• #36: You also may be wondering where you can get this data. Well, if you are on a DoD network and have a Common Access Card, you can access this data via maps.osd.mil. However, keep in mind that not all Hawai‘i data is currently published as we’re still wrapping up the project.