Marshallese Culture Center Will Be Built

Orange County will probably get its first consulate in about a year, and the event may do more for geographical literacy than a dozen PBS travelogues.

Got your atlas ready? Look up the Marshall Islands (hint: between Hawaii and Guam). It’s a collection of 29 atolls and 1,225 tiny islands with a land mass of about 70 square miles in the central Pacific, home to approximately 43,300 Marshallese.

It’s also the homeland of about 375 expatriate Marshallese who live in or near Costa Mesa and who make up the largest concentration of Marshall Islands natives in the continental United States.

The local Marshallese came to Orange County over the last 15 years mainly to go to college, and most have stayed on.

But their ties to the islands and island culture--and to each other--remain strong.

They get together frequently for meetings, parties, dances, cultural events, birthdays, anniversaries, weddings--almost any excuse for a bit of socializing with the home crowd.

So when the idea for a centralized Marshall Islands cultural center in the Costa Mesa area came up about a year ago, it quickly reached the ears of the Marshallese government and Marshall Islands President Amata Kabua. And the idea for a second use of the center began to take shape.

Since the arrival of the Marshallese, Orange County has been considered a kind of cultural and economic touchstone, a link between the islands and the United States. Because of these ties, said Kabua, the cultural center seemed the perfect place to establish a consulate.

“It is very appealing to us,” said Kabua during a visit to Orange County early this month. “It’s gratifying to know that we have friends here who can assist us.”

Kabua and his minister of foreign affairs, Tom Kijiner, made a stop in Orange County on the way to Washington, D.C., to dedicate the new Marshall Islands embassy there. Kijiner said the consulate, like the embassy in the U.S. capital, is expected to give the Marshall Islands greater visibility and higher recognition among Americans, particularly American business people and investors.

“This is a dream,” said Kijiner, “and it’s been a dream for a while now. We need more of these consulates in the United States to take care of our people and to get business activities going between the people back home and United States companies. We are looking to the future, and we see that the western part of the United States, with the (business) development of the Pacific Rim, will be the center of the country as far as we’re concerned. We’re looking at both sides of things, the cultural and the economic.”

The cultural center-consulate would be built on land in a county corridor off Bristol Street that is owned by Jerry Barto, a real estate developer from Newport Beach.

A financing plan has not been worked out yet, said Barto, but a likely option would be joint funding by the local Marshallese community (to cover the expenses associated with the parts of the project used for a cultural center) and the Marshall Islands government (to cover the consulate offices).

The proposed two-story structure would include meeting areas and a stage on the first floor to accommodate approximately 400 people, as well as Marshallese dance and musical groups. Upstairs would be offices for use by both the local Marshallese club, called Jake Jabol Eo, and consular officials.

The center still is not a sure thing, but Kijiner said that “things seem to have fallen into place. I’m very optimistic that it will happen.”