About a dozen businesses were evicted last year from the corner of Kuhio and Seaside avenues in Waikiki, most likely to make room for something more upscale. While that sounds like a bad thing, it’s probably for the best.

The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, a charitable organization with deep roots in Hawaii, owns the property and wants to sell it for $19.5 million.

It’s understandable. The property, leased to Bloss Family LP, once housed a collection of establishments that included restaurants, nightclubs, a strip joint, gun club and adult video parlor — filling a retail niche, perhaps. But some of them were not the sort of enterprises one would associate with the foundation’s good name.

A fatal shooting in 2017 outside Club Alley Cat put a spotlight on the seediness of the area, once normal for parts of Kuhio but increasingly out of step with redevelopment projects there. The properties are now mostly boarded up, awaiting a transformation into something more appropriate and community-friendly.

Because the two parcels are zoned apartment mixed-use, it’s hoped that the property will be developed for local residents who want affordable urban living and the services that go with it: a proper bakery, say, rather than a strip club.