New Longs store slated for Makiki

Longs Drugs Stores has bought commercial real estate in Makiki on which it plans to build a new store next year, continuing a string of new store development in recent years by the drugstore chain in Hawaii.

Longs bought two adjacent parcels mauka of McKinley High School occupied by a pair of office buildings last month for $14.5 million, according to property records.

Company spokesman Mike DeAngelis said construction of a 24,000-square-foot store with a drive-through pharmacy is anticipated to start next year. Completion of the store is expected in 2014.

The existing office buildings occupied largely by medical professionals would be demolished, displacing tenants.

Longs has been more active in opening new stores in Hawaii over the last five years after the retailer was acquired by CVS Caremark Corp. and after the nation’s biggest drugstore chain, Walgreen Co., entered the Hawaii market in direct competition with Longs.

Illinois-based Walgreen opened its first Hawaii store in late 2007 and has since expanded to 14 stores, including eight on Oahu.

CVS, which is based in Rhode Island, bought California-based Longs in 2008 in a $2.7 billion deal that included roughly 500 Longs stores in Arizona, California, Hawaii and Nevada.

The purchase by CVS was challenged by Walgreen, which made a competing offer that was rejected by Longs.

Since its acquisition by CVS, Longs has added about a dozen new stores in Hawaii, though several of them have been small, pharmacy-only stores.

Bigger, full-size Longs stores that have opened in recent years include one in Mililani Mauka earlier this year, one in Ewa Beach last year and one in Moiliili last year.

The Mililani Mauka store was developed on vacant land. The Ewa Beach and Moiliili stores were converted from Star Markets grocery stores that Longs bought in 2009. After the new Moiliili store opened, Longs closed a store that was about two blocks away.

DeAngelis declined to say whether the planned new Makiki store would replace any existing Longs store. There are several other Longs stores within a mile or two of the planned new store.