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Another shopping center will soon shoot up in Kapolei, adding to the swelling retail options in one of Oahu’s fastest-growing regions.
Property Development Centers, the real estate development subsidiary of Safeway Inc., plans to build a $50 million retail complex on undeveloped land across from Kapolei Commons.
The shopping center, scheduled to be completed next year, will have between 20 and 25 tenants and employ 300 to 350 retail workers, said Wendell Brooks III, a senior vice president with CBRE Inc., a commercial real estate broker. The Parkway Shops Kapolei will total 117,000 square feet of gross leasable space, Brooks said Tuesday.
The center will be on an 11-acre site adjacent to the Star-Advertiser’s printing facility along Kapolei Parkway. PDC has agreed to buy the land from Kapolei Property Development, an affiliate of the James Campbell Co., Gerry Wolfe, PDC’s vice president of development, said in a statement.
Brooks said that it is still "to be determined if Safeway would move" into the new complex. Kapolei already has a Safeway nearby.
PDC is working on several other major development projects in Hawaii that have not yet been announced, Brooks said.
Safeway’s strategy in recent years has been to develop new stores in conjunction with adjacent retail space for restaurants and other tenants through PDC.
The PDC projects in Hawaii that have been announced include the 218,000-square-foot Laulani Village Shopping Center on 20 acres at the corner of Fort Weaver Road and Keaunui Drive, opening in the fourth quarter, as well as a retail complex in Lihue.
Those developments come on the heels of recently completed PDC projects, including the Safeway Beretania Street complex, which opened in December, and a Safeway store at Makaala Center in Hilo, which opened in March 2011.
The additional retail space in Kapolei could benefit the existing stores by attracting more customers, the developer of Kapolei Commons said.
"We’re not familiar with what their tenant roster is, but in general it’s good to have more retail in one area so that you can create a broader shopping district," said Jeff Arce, a partner at The MacNaughton Group, developer of Kapolei Commons, which will have just over 600,000 square feet of retail space upon completion. Kapolei Commons is home to chains including Target, Sports Authority and Petco.
Consumers for the most part welcome new retail in the growing region that will soon be home to a new University of Hawaii at West Oahu campus and several residential communities, including Makaiwa Hills, a 4,200-residence master-planned community west of Makakilo, and Kapolei West, a 2,500 multifamily development east of Ko Olina.
"I believe that what’s going to be a main issue like any other new development is the traffic," said Kapolei resident Claudia Quintanilla. "On a positive note, it’s providing jobs and giving more options for consumers. There’s going to be a lot of shops. Financially we can then decide which store we can afford to go to. The negative is the traffic and whether these retailers will be able to sustain their businesses because there’s so much competition."
Jodi Akau, a Hawaiian Home Lands resident in Kapolei, said the location of the new shopping center is good for retail and far enough away from residential neighborhoods.
"That would be the place to have progress," she said. "It’s easier and faster to get onto the freeway from there. You can go right to Target and across to the next mall."
Other projects planned for Kapolei include:
» Ka Makana Alii, a large shopping mall being developed by an affiliate of DeBartolo Development between Kapolei Parkway and Roosevelt Avenue. It will have 1.1 million square feet of retail space and 200,000 square feet each of hotel and office buildings on 67 acres.
» Foodland Super Market Ltd.’s 56,000-square-foot Kapolei Village Center, slated to open in the fall.
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