The developer of Ward Village presented a plan last week to dramatically accelerate moderate-price condominium production in the neighborhood.

Consolidating 697 such homes in a single tower is intended to quickly finish satisfying a state affordable-housing requirement for the entire master-planned Kakaako neighborhood slated for up to 4,500 homes largely in 16 towers.

But there are some mixed views on such concentration rather than a more blended distribution of mixed-income households throughout Ward Village.

The issue has existed more broadly in Hawaii for decades, and is expected to come up when the Hawaii Community Development Authority, a state agency regulating development in Kakaako, considers a forthcoming development permit application for the tower dubbed Ulana Ward Village proposed by Howard Hughes Corp.

“That is an issue I think we’re going to have to grapple with,” said John Whalen, a former city planning official who is HCDA’s board chairman.

Whalen, founder of local development consulting firm Plan Pacific Inc. and a former director of the city Department of Land Utilization, now known as the Department of Planning and Permitting, said segregating or clustering affordable housing together generally isn’t desirable.

“Sociologically, I don’t think it’s a particularly good thing,” he said.

However, Whalen also noted that integrating households with disparate income levels in a single high-rise can present problems for lower-income homeowners affording maintenance fees in a building with amenities tailored to wealthier buyers, which can make such integration undesirable.

“There is sort of this economic factor,” he said. “It’s an ongoing issue.”

HCDA rules pertaining to Ward Village require that at least 20% of new homes be affordable to residents with moderate incomes, with prices linked to mortgage interest rates and median household incomes for Honolulu.

Hughes Corp., a Texas-­based company that acquired 60 acres of largely retail and industrial property for redevelopment from the owner of Ala Moana Center in 2010, early on set its sights to largely make Ward Village an exceptionally upscale master-planned community.

The developer’s first tower, Waiea, featured two grand penthouses priced at $35 million and $36 million, and the average unit price in the building completed in late 2016 was $3.6 million. Monthly maintenance fees at Waiea were initially estimated to range from about $1,200 to $10,000.

Average condo prices at Ward Village’s next two towers were $1.2 million at Anaha and $1 million at Ae‘o.

Hughes Corp. delivered its first increment of moderate-price housing under HCDA rules with its fourth tower, Ke Kilohana, which opened last year with 375 units reserved for moderate-income households and 48 market-price units.

Ke Kilohana prices mostly ranged from about $300,000 to $600,000. However, maintenance expenses have been much higher than what Hughes Corp. estimated for buyers, and this year Ke Kilohana’s ownership board sued the developer and alleged that Hughes Corp. grossly underestimated maintenance fees to make residences appear more affordable.

Hughes Corp. estimated initial monthly fees ranging from about $270 to $525 would be sufficient to cover expenses and build reserves, but homeowners faced a roughly 50% fee hike because operating expenses exceeded maintenance fee revenue by $40,000 to $50,000 a month.

At another Ward Village tower, ‘A‘ali‘i, which is under construction, 150 moderate­ -price condos are among 752 units.

This tower is described as a luxury property with smaller residences that include studios with as little as 277 square feet of living space and prices starting in the $500,000s. Bigger units in ‘A‘ali‘i top $1 million, and estimated initial monthly maintenance fees range from $279 to $835.

Like Waiea, Anaha and Ae‘o, ‘A‘ali‘i is in the heart of Ward Village, as is one more luxury tower under construction, Ko‘ula, where the average condo price is around $1 million.

Ulana, the tower envisioned to fulfill the rest of Ward Village’s moderate-­price housing requirement, is along the community’s Ewa edge and makai of Ke Kilohana, which Hughes Corp. nestled up to an existing low-income rental tower on state land.

Race Randle, senior vice president of planning and development at Ward Village, would not discuss the company’s experience with unit mixes at ‘A‘ali‘i and Ke Kilohana, but said Ulana is set for a prime location within Ward Village and the heart of Kakaako.

“Like every site in our community, Ulana will link seamlessly with neighborhood amenities: parks, neighborhood services and everything that Kakaako has to offer,” he said in a statement.

Part of the Ulana site bordered by Auahi, Kamani and Pohukaina streets a block Ewa of Ward Avenue would feature a 30,000-square-foot public park Hughes Corp. describes as an original and key component of its master plan. A 40,000-square-foot park for Ulana residents also is part of the tower project along with retail and an industrial building.

The property is immediately mauka of a site owned by Kamehameha Schools once planned for a luxury tower called Vida at 888 Ala Moana. The developers of this tower, Honolulu-based firms Kobayashi Group and The MacNaughton Group, canceled plans for Vida in 2016 after insufficient buyer interest for units priced from $988,000 to more than $4 million not including penthouses.

According to Hughes Corp., the word “ulana,” which can mean “to weave” in the Hawaiian language, was selected to reflect anticipated integration of Ward Village with the 29-acre master plan of Kamehameha Schools slated for 2,750 homes primarily in seven towers.

Kamehameha Schools also has faced issues with integrating or separating moderate- and higher-price housing to satisfy HCDA rules.

The trust, which has partnered with several developers to produce homes in its master plan, has delivered two towers so far, The Collection and Keauhou Place, with lower average prices than market-price towers at Ward Village. Keauhou Place included units counting toward HCDA’s moderate-price housing requirement while The Collection did not.

To partly satisfy HCDA’s requirement, Kamehameha Schools produced the Keauhou Lane rental apartment midrise that is connected to the Keauhou Place tower by a retail-lined plaza.

Kamehameha Schools also satisfied part of its moderate-price housing requirement by selling 162 refurbished units in the more than 50-year-old Pagoda Terrace hotel in Pawaa to low- and moderate-income buyers. This arrangement was approved by a prior HCDA board under an amendment to the trust’s master plan, and part of the trade-off was that the 162 units reduced the trust’s affordable-housing obligation by 100 units.

Throughout Kakaako, which includes 450 acres permitted for housing between Ala Moana Boulevard and Punchbowl, Piikoi and King streets, the existing mix of largely high-rise housing is quite diverse in cost.

There are several low-­income rental towers on state land financed in part with cash that developers gave HCDA in lieu of building moderate-price homes in higher-price condo towers.

A few towers, including Symphony Honolulu, Pa­cifica and Keola Lai, have below-market and market-price units.

The first master-planned neighborhood in Kakaako, just Ewa of Ala Moana Center, includes three market­-price condo towers — Nauru, Hawaiki and Waihonua — along with neighboring moderate-price tower 1133 Waimanu and the nearby low-income rental midrise Hale Kewalo.

Harrison Rue, the city’s community building and transit-oriented development administrator, has said research studies show mixed-income housing in the same neighborhood — not so much the same building — makes for healthy communities.

“We think the most important thing is getting the affordable housing built, and being in the same neighborhood,” he said in a 2018 interview.

At the same time, the city encourages developers to include affordable housing on the same site as market-­price homes under an incentive that reduces the number of required below-market homes if they are on the same site. This incentive was created in 2018 but does not apply to Kakaako.