Owners of abutting Honolulu buildings remain locked in a renovation dispute

Two historic downtown Honolulu office buildings could use some social distancing on Queen Emma Street.

The owner of a visually unique tower nicknamed the “pimple building” is locked in a facade-to-facade dispute with the owner of an adjacent 3-story building sporting its own distinctive features.

The dispute, which pits a local affordable-housing developer against the owner of a local engineering and construction firm, has involved police intervention, alleged property damage, personal safety hazards and a requested court injunction.

At issue is renovation work to the long-vacant 12-story pimple building formally known as the Queen Emma Building, which is being converted from former office use to 71 rental apartments for low-income households by a firm led by Kailua-based Ahe Group in partnership with Florida-based Southport Financial Services and financing largely from the state.

The roughly $25 million conversion job, which began in October, includes cutting 14 openings for windows into the mauka side of the tower, which was built in 1964 and is dotted by hundreds of brick stubs that give the building its nickname.

But this work has drawn concerns from the owner of the 3-story building, which dates to 1950 and sits an inch or so from the tower’s mauka side.

Joseph Pickard bought the shorter building building in 2011 and spent $3.5 million creating modern corporate office space for his engineering and construction firms Environet Inc. and Community Planning &Engineering Inc., along with tour firm SeaHawaii Inc., also founded by Pickard.

The dispute between the two building owners started over requests by the tower owner to install a wooden canopy and netting that would hang off the lower portion of the tower’s side to safeguard the shorter building from any debris falling from work on the windows and an effort to improve deteriorating integrity of the brick pieces attached to the side of the building.

Pickard, however, said he objected because he believes the safety measures aren’t sufficient, especially because part of his building almost touching the tower is an atrium he created for employees. The side of the long atrium space facing the tower wall is lined with a “living wall” of 1,500 plants, and the other side features floor-to-ceiling glass window walls spanning two floors next to work stations. A polycarbonate skylight tops the atrium space.

Pickard said hisfear is that a big scaffolding platform hung over the side of the tower to do the work above the atrium, which runs about half the length of his building, could be dislodged in heavy winds and fall through any safety barriers.

“We have a 1,000-pound piece of equipment sitting over the heads of our employees in the atrium,” he said. “It’s a danger. They introduced a deadly problem into our workplace.”

Pickard and his employees allegedly have thwarted efforts by the developer’s contractor, Swinerton Builders, to install the safety barriers, with actions that include tying up scaffold cables sitting on his roof to immobilize the platform, allegedly attempting to spray workers with a water hose and using a sledgehammer on bracing for a safety barrier.

Pickard said the equipment he targeted encroached on his property and was part of what he called irresponsible work by Swinerton, which deployed two scaffold platform lifts above his building with no protections below. This scaffolding, Pickard said, has already dislodged bricks and pieces of brick that have fallen onto his roof sometimes used by his employees.

“They came up with their plan and they’re trying to shove it down our throats,” he said, sitting atop his skylight Friday below an unmanned scaffold lift at the top of the tower.

Tower project officials accuse Pickard of interfering with construction in reckless and dangerous ways that at one point stranded workers on the lift.

“We’re just trying to do the work as safe as possible, and he’s hindering that,” said Stacey Canaday, senior superintendent with Swinerton, which has about 100 workers on the project. “He literally is standing under the scaffolding to prevent the guys from doing their work.”

Makani Maeva, principal of Ahe Group, said the developer’s team is trying to be a good neighbor but that Pickard wouldn’t agree to let workers use his roof to attach the safety barricades on the side of the tower, which forced workers to use the scaffold lifts for barricade installation work.

“What the hell are we supposed to do?” she said. “He’s stopping affordable housing and the opportunity for these guys to work.”

Maeva also claimed that Pickard told her that he doesn’t want affordable housing next to his office.

Pickard said that’s not true. “I grew up in affordable housing,” he said, adding that his family has developed affordable housing in Kahuku.

On Friday, the tower development partnership, Queen Emma Partners LP, filed a motion in state Circuit Court asking a judge for an injunction to prevent Pickard from interfering with renovation work.

In the motion, two Swinerton workers, Norman Cuaresma and Oscar Juarez, stated that they were on the mobile platform on March 2 when Pickard unsuccessfully tried to cut dangling cables with bolt cutters and then tied the cables to a beam on his roof so that the two workers couldn’t raise or lower the platform.

Police were called and persuaded Pickard to untie the cables, the filing said.

Police were on the scene again Friday after many of Pickard’s 60 employees positioned themselves under two mobile platforms to discourage work on the side of the tower.

Maeva had projected that renovation work would be done by August, but that’s in doubt pending any resolution to the dispute.