Two new residential towers are now open in Kakaako, marking milestones for separate but slowly converging master-planned communities in Honolulu’s urban core.
The Collection, featuring 465 homes, opened Wednesday. And Waiea, with 174 homes, opens today.
The two condominium towers that front Ala Moana Boulevard are only about a mile apart, and their completion — after about two years of construction — represents similar milestones for Kamehameha Schools and the Howard Hughes Corp.
At Our Kaka‘ako, a master-planned community by Kamehameha Schools, the “our” is getting a lot bigger with The Collection, which is the first residential tower in the neighborhood slated for 2,750 homes and 300,000 square feet of commercial space on 29 acres between South and Kamani streets mauka of Ala Moana Boulevard.
“This is a big day for us,” said Rick Stack, senior vice president of development for Alexander &Baldwin Inc., which developed The Collection for $279 million on land the company bought from Kamehameha Schools. The site was home to a CompUSA store from 1998 to 2008.
Over at the Ward Village community being developed by Howard Hughes, Waiea adds the first residents to this neighborhood programmed for 4,300 homes and 1 million square feet of commercial space on 60 acres that stretches from around Kamani to the Diamond Head end of Auahi Street.
“The vision of Ward Village is to create a thriving neighborhood in the heart of Honolulu, and that vision became reality today,” said Todd Apo, vice president of community development in Hawaii for Texas-based Hughes Corp., which spent $403 million on Waiea.
Residential towers have popped up here and there in Kakaako for more than three decades after the state identified the largely industrial area for concentrated high-rise residential development. However, Ward Village and Our Kaka‘ako are the first large landholdings where towers, commercial buildings and open spaces are purposefully being placed with the idea of creating seamless neighborhoods.
Our Kaka‘ako took an initial small step, adding residents four years ago when Kamehameha Schools turned a midrise office building into 54 affordable rental apartments called Six Eighty Ala Moana in 2012.
After that, a retail complex dubbed SALT was created where new tenants continue to open in a mix of new and renovated low-rise buildings connected to a new 266-stall parking structure.
Earlier this year, two new midrise residential buildings opened — 400 Keawe with 95 condos and The Flats at Pu‘unui with 88 rental apartments.
The Collection becomes the fourth — and biggest — housing piece of Our Kaka‘ako, and nearly triples the number of homes in the community from 237 to 702.
Tahnee Allman picked up her keys Wednesday after deciding two years ago to move from Kaneohe to a neighborhood where she can walk to work instead of spending 30 minutes to an hour in morning traffic. She’s looking forward to strolling to a restaurant with her fiance and walking her dog to a coffee shop.
“Kakaako sounded like a cool neighborhood,” said Allman, a financial adviser for Edward Jones. “I think it’ll be very refreshing and exciting. I’m looking forward to walking everywhere.”
Almost all residents in The Collection are expected to move in over the next month or two. About 140 owners were scheduled to pick up their keys Wednesday.
All but 11 units are sold in The Collection, which includes 54 mainly studio units in a four-story building facing Ala Moana Boulevard, 397 units in the tower and 14 three-story town houses mainly along Auahi Street.
Stack said about 85 percent of Collection buyers are local residents. “We didn’t view this location as a resort area,” he said. “We thought our primary buyers would be local residents.”
The average unit price was $684,000. Monthly maintenance fees range from $324 to $1,004.
There are also four ground-floor commercial spaces on three sides of The Collection that have yet to be leased or sold.
After the Collection fills up with people, two more additions to Our Kaka‘ako are expected to deliver another 650 homes to the community next year. One is Keauhou Place, a condo tower with 450 units being built by local developer Stanford Carr. The other is a 209-unit mid-rise rental complex called Keauhou Lane being developed by Portland, Ore.-based Gerding Edlen.
At Ward Village, plans to turn the well-established Ward Centers retail complex into a “live, work, play” community go back more than a decade. An initial piece of the property was sold for the development of the luxury condo tower Hokua in 2002, but the Ward Village master plan was created later and so Hokua technically is on the outside edge of the community.
Apo said some Waiea residents are moving in today and that all unit owners are scheduled to pick up their keys by mid-December. A Nobu restaurant in the tower’s ground floor is slated to open next month.
About 160 of 174 Waiea units are sold. The average price is about $3.6 million. Two penthouse units priced at $35 million and $36 million are still available. Estimated monthly maintenance fees range from $1,254 to $10,692.
Hughes Corp. did not have an estimate of how many Waiea unit buyers are local residents.
More residential additions to Ward Village are expected over the next few years. A second tower, Anaha, with 317 units, is on pace for completion in mid-2017. After that, a 466-unit tower called Ae‘o, anchored by a Whole Foods store, is projected for completion in 2018. A fourth tower called Ke Kilohana featuring 424 units is projected for completion in 2019.
