Sites near UH, including Puck’s Alley, eyed for redevelopment

Kamehameha Schools is making another run at redeveloping 6.5 acres in Moiliili near the University of Hawaii, six years after an unsuccessful effort to create a largely retail and residential “town center” on the site.

The trust benefiting Native Hawaiian children issued a request for development proposals Wednesday for the property that includes Puck’s Alley and two opposing blocks on the Ewa side of University Avenue.

If successful, the effort could result in close to 1 million square feet of new commercial, residential, educational and community space on the property that currently includes an office building, some residential apartments and more than two dozen small shops and restaurants.

“It is a vital gateway physically into the university area, Waikiki and Honolulu,” said Kamehameha Schools spokesman Aron Dote.

Some tenants on the property said they weren’t aware of the new initiative but know that their landlord for the last several years has explored redevelopment that presumably would generate higher tenant rents and income for the trust.

“It’s been extremely tentative the last five years,” said Willu Diaz, who opened the restaurant A Place to Eat in 2012 at Puck’s Alley.

For neighboring small-business owner Josh Schade, redevelopment would displace his business, Ahi Assassins Fish Co., and a business his wife runs called E Luna Lashes.

Schade, a Kamehameha Schools alumnus, said he supports redevelopment that revitalizes neighborhoods, and adds that the trust has been a good landlord to him. But he figures his shop selling locally caught fish, poke and other seafood items on the second floor of a building fronting South Beretania Street wouldn’t be able to afford rent in a new complex.

“I would have to move,” he said, adding that the beauty salon operated by his wife in Puck’s Alley would too.

Other tenants include Burger King, Jiffy Lube, Beer Lab Hawaii, Blazin’ Steaks, Nijiya Market, The Greek Corner, Cream ‘n Roll, Pipeline Smoke Shop and Cricket Wireless. Even a few new tenants are in the process of moving in, such as Farm to Fork Catering and Study Hall Sports Bar &Grill.

Kamehameha Schools, Hawaii’s largest private landowner, has set a summer deadline for interested developers and investors to respond to its offer through commercial real estate firm JLL.

Dote said what happens after that and how fast depends on the proposals received. Given that any successful proposal would have to have details negotiated and require design work, financing and permitting, it could be years before anything changes on the site.

“This is a very preliminary stage,” Dote said.

A similar effort was made in 2012 but didn’t result in redevelopment of the land that includes the circular Varsity Office Building and the former home of Varsity Theater.

That prior plan enlisted California-based retail center developer and operator Festival Cos. to solicit interest in creating a retail and entertainment complex featuring a movie theater on much of the site along with a seven-story residential building to replace Puck’s Alley.

Festival, which had handled the $115 million makeover of another Kamehameha Schools property, Royal Hawaiian Center in Waikiki, dubbed the project Moiliili Gateway, a name being used again to promote what the trust views as a prime redevelopment opportunity.

Local developer Peter Savio, who more than a decade ago tried to interest Kamehameha Schools in redeveloping the old Varsity Theater site and Puck’s Alley with a mix of commercial space and student dorms, said something that can make the area feel more like a town connected to UH would work well.

“They need that college town for the university,” he said. “There’s nothing, and that’s a weakness for the university.”

Kamehameha Schools has long owned the land under the Puck’s Alley retail complex, which was built in 1973 under a lease with a developer that has since expired.

Across University Avenue fronting Beretania, the trust leased land to other developers decades ago but acquired full control of the property in recent years.

The third parcel where Varsity Office Building is and Varsity Theater used to be was previously owned by an affiliate of Consolidated Theatres, but the trust acquired the site in a 2007 deal that gave the theater company the land under the old Kamehameha Drive-In in Aiea plus $8 million.

Robertson Properties Group, the theater company affiliate, has been unable to start building its roughly $800 million project called Live Work Play ‘Aiea featuring retail, a hotel and 1,500 new homes on the 15-acre site where an initial phase was previously expected to be finished in 2016.