Waikiki rental tower developer to revise affordable-housing plan

A proposal to provide around 100 new or renovated affordable rental apartments in Waikiki as part of a planned tower on Kuhio Avenue is up for revision after the city adopted new affordable-housing requirements last week.

The developer of the apartment tower, OliverMcMillan, last year proposed making 20 percent of all units affordable for 15 years in consideration for allowing the tower to be denser and taller than permitted under zoning.

However, new city rules require that 5 percent of homes be affordable — though for at least 30 years — in the case of the OliverMcMillan project.

A representative of San Diego-based OliverMcMillan said Monday that the company anticipates changing its plan to meet or exceed the new requirement, but how to do that hasn’t been decided.

OliverMcMillan initially envisioned building a 450-unit tower on land at the corner of Kuhio Avenue and Kanekapolei Street that includes a Food Pantry store, and renovating about 50 old low-rise apartments on the other side of Kanekapolei Street. Of the 500 units, 100 were to be affordable, including the low-rise apartments that would be completely renovated.

That plan won endorsements from the Waikiki Neighborhood Board and the Waikiki Improvement Association.

On Sunday the developer published a draft environmental assessment that revised the total number of units to 444, including 390 in the tower. Of the total, 20 percent would be affordable, including 54 renovated low-rise units and 35 new units in the tower.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell on April 3 signed City Council measure Bill 58 (2017), which lowered the number of affordable homes residential developers need to produce but made the requirement apply to more projects.

So, OliverMcMillan could benefit.

Previously, the developer, which announced its plan last year, said the cost to deliver 100 affordable units was $21 million. The company hasn’t disclosed an updated cost for 89 affordable units.

OliverMcMillan is pursuing the project on 2.5 acres under a lease agreement with landowner Queen Emma Land Co., a nonprofit that generates income for The Queen’s Medical Center from land Queen Emma left to the hospital in 1885.

Queen Emma Land would lease the property to the developer for 65 years, and some income from the project would flow back to the hospital.

The tower is designed with units ranging from studios to three-bedroom units, and would also feature small retail ground-floor spaces, a second-floor grocery store with an outdoor dining terrace overlooking Kuhio Avenue, a fitness center also on the second floor and a sky deck and lounge on the top floor. Food Pantry would be demolished, while a banyan tree on the city’s list of exceptional trees will be preserved.

Kris Hui, OliverMcMillan development director, said in a recent interview that rental tower projects are difficult in Hawaii because of high land costs. The deal with Queen Emma Land, however, made the Kuhio project viable, and Hui said it’s probably the first large-scale apartment project not subsidized by government financing in more than 30 years on Oahu.

“Something like this project is unheard of,” he said. “Rental housing here is hard to do.”

The site is zoned for apartment-mixed use, which allows apartments and retail but not condominiums or hotels. The height limit for the property is 260 feet, and the developer is seeking for the tower to rise 285 feet. OliverMcMillan also is seeking to have the tower be denser and encroach slightly on transitional setbacks that dictate how far from a property line upper portions of the tower should be.

Permission for the height and density bonuses is being sought under a planned development permit, which gives more flexibility to landowners, and is up to the City Council.

Under the city’s new rules, affordable rentals must be for households earning no more than 80 percent of Honolulu’s median income, which is what OliverMcMillan had offered. That equates to $58,640 for a single person or $66,960 for a couple.

The city’s new rules also say that “substantial rehabilitation” of a dwelling counts the same as building a new affordable unit. The three buildings OliverMcMillan intends to renovate are three stories and were built in 1958. One building, Waikiki Regents Apartments, has nine two-bedroom units and is boarded up. Another building, Queen Emma Apartments, features 15 one-bedroom units, of which only six are leased. The last building, Beachside Apartments, includes 24 one-bedroom units and six studios that are leased to a co-op.

If the city grants approvals, construction could start next year and be finished in 2021.