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Razing old industrial buildings and replacing them with sleek condominium towers has been a land-use trend in Kakaako for 40 years. So it was a welcome change for a state board to hear a plan to restore one relic, albeit a rather drab-looking one, in the area.
A company affiliated with the conservationist owners of outdoor gear retailer Patagonia is seeking to return a former industrial warehouse on Ward Avenue to its original 1928 condition.
The company, Dearborn 535 LLC, also wants to preserve the single-story concrete building and prohibit its redevelopment in perpetuity.
Representatives of Dearborn 535 presented their plan Wednesday to the board of the Hawaii Community Development Authority, a state agency that regulates development in Kakaako.
Board member Beau Bassett called the proposal refreshing. So did board member Jason Okuhama, who also described the plan as honorable for doing the opposite of what other Kakaako real estate investors have been doing in recent decades.
Dearborn 535 plans to turn the restored warehouse into retail space. Project manager Jenna Wells declined to say whether Patagonia would open one of its own stores there or lease the property to others.
The company estimates restoration will cost $5 million and take nine months to complete if it receives the necessary permits. HCDA is slated to make a decision at a November meeting.
Plans call for the removal of a bank of retail spaces attached to the Ward Avenue side of the building in 1965. Pieces of the original warehouse that were modified or removed — including most of a wall with 11 large windows taken out as part of the 1965 addition — would be restored.
BUILT IN 1928
The warehouse was built 90 years ago by Dearborn Chemical Co., a Chicago- based company founded to reduce mineral deposits mostly in locomotive boilers.
Dearborn Chemical established a Honolulu office in 1898 and built the Kakaako warehouse in 1928 for $20,000, according to Dearborn 535’s application to HCDA. The chemical company also had intended to construct an office building, storage facility and manufacturing plant on the site but didn’t go through with those plans, the application said.
It sold the warehouse in 1965 to Jack Tsukamoto, who made the retail space additions and renamed the property the Universial Building for new tenant Universal Products Co., a Hawaii distributor for Japanese electronics maker Hitachi. Other tenants included Universal Electric Co. and Mits’ Health Studio.
Baltoro Waimanu LLC, a firm affiliated with Patagonia, bought the property in 2014 for $8.5 million and transferred ownership to Dearborn 535 last year. Both companies are connected with Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard and his wife, Malinda. Patagonia operates a store a couple blocks makai at a Ward Village site slated for redevelopment in coming years.
SAVED FROM EXPANSION
Wells said the owners saw the former Dearborn Chemical warehouse as a unique building that could be saved from expanding condo tower development.
Dearborn 535 intends to seek federal historic preservation tax credits and have the restored building listed on state and national registers of historic places. It also has signed a letter of intent with the Historic Hawaii Foundation to give the nonprofit an easement that prohibits redevelopment in perpetuity.
The company said in its application that the warehouse has historic significance associated with Kakaako’s industrial past and is a rare surviving example of a pre-World War II light-industrial masonry building in the area.
“Dearborn Chemical was the most substantial building in its area, one of only a handful of non-residential buildings,” the application said. “As late as 1939, the Dearborn Chemical Company warehouse stood out in a neighborhood of single- family, frame houses.”
The application also noted that three other masonry buildings from the same period, including a laundry building and steel company building, are gone.
“It harkens back to a time in the history of Kakaako when light industrial and where manufacturing and related uses were the norm,” Kiersten Faulkner, Historic Hawaii Foundation executive director, told HCDA’s board. “We’re moving away from that time period, but this building still tells that story.”
CREATION OF HCDA
HCDA was created in 1976 because Kakaako, which once was predominantly residential, had become a blighted industrial part of Honolulu where the city was overwhelmed by the need to upgrade substandard infrastructure that included narrow streets with poor drainage and no sidewalks. Part of HCDA’s mission was to require new industrial spaces along with residential high-rise development, but that requirement was later eliminated.
Kay Fukuda, a Kakaako resident for 11 years, said she likes the light industrial feel of her neighborhood and endorsed the warehouse preservation plan. “I love this idea of keeping some of the old that represents the history of Kakaako,” she told HCDA’s board.
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