Ala Moana owner details its 400-foot tower plan

The owner of Ala Moana Center is advancing a plan to build its first 400-foot residential tower connected with Hawaii’s largest shopping mall as soon as next year.

The tower, dubbed Ala Moana Plaza, would feature 595 rental apartments at the corner of Kona and Piikoi streets, and replace a small commercial complex that is next to the mall and owned by the mall’s owner, Brookfield Property Partners.

A Brookfield representative presented details of the planned tower to the Ala Moana-Kakaako Neighborhood Board on Tuesday night after a briefing in September without much detail.

Development of the tower isn’t related to the company’s recent effort to convince the City Council that building height and density limits should be increased to 400 feet for almost the entire mall site.

Brookfield, a Canadian company that bought a majority stake in the mall two years ago, is seeking the broad change through proposed amendments to 4-year-old “draft final” city transit-oriented development rules that allow for development bonuses close to city rail stations in return for public benefits.

The Ala Moana Plaza tower site, which is almost adjacent to a planned city rail station, has a basic 100-foot height limit like most of the mall. But current draft TOD rules allow for an additional 300 feet on the tower site with City Council approval.

Brookfield intends to submit an application for its tower plan soon to the city Department of Planning and Permitting, which would make recommendations to the City Council.

On Tuesday, Keith Kurahashi, a local planning consultant representing Brookfield, said the company hopes to obtain approvals so that construction can begin by the end of next year. If that happens, completion is projected for mid-2024.

The tower, he said, would include 119 units, representing 20% of apartments, reserved for households with lower to moderate incomes under city affordable-housing guidelines.

These affordable units would have maximum monthly rents of $1,390 for studios, $1,563 for one-bedroom units and $2,067 for two-bedroom units if they were available now. Affordable rents tied to income would stay in place for 30 years.

To qualify for an affordable unit, tenants could earn no more than 80% of the annual median income in Honolulu, which equates to $67,520 for a single person, $77,120 for a couple and $96,400 for a family of four.

Kurahashi said the affordable units would be distributed up to the 28th floor of the 40-story tower.

“They will be kind of spread out throughout the building,” he said.

Market-priced rental units from studios to three- bedroom apartments would be on every residential floor.

The planned tower is slated to include relatively few parking spaces, though residents would be allowed to park at the mall as part of a strategy to reduce car use in favor of rail when rail service to Ala Moana Center is projected to start in 2025.

Only 225 parking stalls are planned for Ala Moana Plaza, or one stall per 2.6 apartments. An adjacent 9-story parking garage at the mall also would be available to tenants.

“If we need additional parking stalls, we’ll draw from that parking garage next door,” Kurahashi said.

Kurahashi also anticipates that fewer parking stalls would be used because the tower should attract mall employees who can walk to work.

About 300 spaces for bike parking also would be in the tower.

Lynn Mariano, a neighborhood board member who lives near the tower site, expressed concerns about already busy streets in the area getting more congested with nearly 600 new residential units.

“Kona Street and Piikoi is going to be mired in traffic,” he said. “It’s just going to be a nightmare.”

Kurahashi said a traffic study for the project shows that peak-hour vehicle trips for the site will go up by 63 in the morning but go down by 15 in the evening.

Chris Chung, another board member, complimented Brookfield on the tower plan, saying that it alleviates negative impacts by allowing mall employees to live next to where they work and by letting residents park at the mall.

“This is one of the lowest-impact projects we can get,” he said.

Chung encouraged Brookfield to seek permission to build higher than 400 feet.

Increasing the roughly 400-foot building height limit in Honolulu has been proposed before and been met with much opposition.