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Kamehameha Schools is planning three luxury residential condominiums fronting Ala Moana Boulevard as part of its Kakaako master plan that will transform the neighborhood and generate projected revenue of $2 billion.
The landowner specified for the first time Friday plans for its seven towers in the urban district, including fee-simple luxury condominiums, as well as rental and fee-simple units reserved for middle-income families, with a total of 2,750 units.
"What we did specify in our overall master plan is that we would develop a diverse mix of products and that we were going to touch every income group," said Paul Kay, Kamehameha’s director of real estate development. "To do a true master-plan community, you really do have to provide a broad variety and mix of housing types. The point is to have them across the entire district. Certain blocks just lend themselves much better to moderate and workforce housing, and some of them just naturally lend themselves to a higher end."
Kamehameha Schools’ 15-year Kakaako master plan, approved by the Hawaii Community Development Authority in 2009, covers 29 acres spread over nine blocks. It eventually will include seven towers and 300,000 square feet of commercial space. Kamehameha Schools, Hawaii’s largest private landowner, is a private trust that uses its money to educate students of Hawaiian ancestry.
The market is ripe for development, which is driving the fourth piece of the Kakaako redevelopment master plan, a 600-unit project breaking ground late next year.
Kamehameha and Honolulu developer Stanford Carr announced Friday a $300 million residential project that will include a 40-story high-rise tower at 555 South St., currently an open parking area kitty-corner from Restaurant Row, as well as low-rise townhomes, live-work units, rental apartments and retail space.
The project, designed for the local market, is expected to generate more than 500 construction jobs and is slated for completion in 2016.
"The market’s only going to last so long before it tips again," Kay added. "This project’s going to generate a lot of jobs. It really is an opportune time to try to make a place where people can come and live back in the urban core instead of having to spend all their time driving."
Kamehameha is building roughly 150 live-work units, rental apartments, as well as retail space on more than 69,000 square feet of the property, while Stanford Carr Development will construct 450 units on roughly 93,000 square feet in the high-rise tower called Keauhou Place and low-rise townhomes. The developer also will build a parking structure lined with the townhomes and commercial space that will include an undisclosed neighborhood grocery store along South and Pohukaina streets.
Carr said that he is investing roughly $250 million in the construction and land acquisition for his portion of the project, while Kamehameha will spend about $40 million.
"This is a natural extension to really do a truly mixed-use project with a diversity of housing opportunities for different lifestyles," said Carr, who also is developing Halekauwila Place, an affordable rental apartment tower across from the project site next to Mother Waldron Park. "This was once a really diverse vibrant residential mixed-use community with small businesses and residences. We believe the critical mass justifies the means of creating a real neighborhood."
The projects call for nearly 50,000 square feet of recreational space and in excess of 65,000 square feet of open space, including new landscaped sidewalks.
An estimated 40 percent of the housing units at the mix-used project called Keauhou Lane will be reserved for middle-income families. The rental units will range in price from $1,050 to $1,300 per month. Fee-simple units will start in the high-$300,000 range. To qualify for so-called workforce housing units, renters can earn up to 100 percent of Honolulu’s median income, and fee-simple buyers can earn up to 140 percent.
Kamehameha launched two other projects as part of the Kakaako master plan earlier this year.
The first piece is being developed by Alexander & Baldwin Inc., which is buying the former site of a CompUSA store at the makai end of South Street from the trust and proposing a tower and low-rise buildings with 470 condominiums called The Collection.
The second piece is a retail complex dubbed SALT on a block adjacent to The Collection that will be created mostly by renovating old buildings on the site.
Both The Collection and SALT are pending approval by the Hawaii Community Development Authority. Kamehameha unveiled its first residential project in October, with the completion of Six Eighty Ala Moana.
Some residents worry the area could become too congested.
"The location is convenient. It’s central to everywhere," said Peter Choi, 51, who lives at the luxury Koolani condominium in Kakaako. "You have to pay a lot to live here. I don’t want the place to be overcrowded. There’s room to grow, but I would worry if there were too many people in this small area."
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