Like Like Drive Inn site is sold to condo tower developer JL Capital for $15.3 million

A high-rise condominium development firm has bought a retail property on Keeaumoku Street that had been home to Like Like Drive Inn for nearly seven decades until last year.

An affiliate of Honolulu-based JL Capital purchased the roughly 1-acre site at 745 Keeaumoku St., along with the Like Like Drive Inn name, for $15.3 million.

The company said in a statement that it has no immediate plans for redeveloping the site and intends to keep several existing retail tenants in place.

JL Capital, which was formed in 2018 and is led by Timothy Lee, also said recently that it has acquired a dozen properties in the Kapi­olani Boulevard corridor area for potential redevelopment and adaptive reuse, including production of 1,800 to 2,000 homes over the next 10 to 20 years.

The company’s entry into the market was Sky Ala Moana, a $500 million project with 474 residential condos and 300 hotel units in a pair of towers that began construction last year on Kapiolani Boulevard about two blocks Ewa and makai of the Like Like Drive Inn site.

Several condo development firms have been active in much of the Kapiolani corridor over the past several years, attracted in part by transit-oriented development height and density bonuses allowed by the city because of proximity to a planned rail station near Ala Moana Center.

The former Like Like Drive Inn site is one block mauka of the Azure Ala Moana condo tower nearing completion, and is immediately makai of a site slated for development of a planned two-tower condo called The Park on Keeaumoku.

Like Like Drive Inn closed early last year after 67 years in business, and a company owned by descendants of the popular eatery’s founders was the seller of the retail complex that included the restaurant and is known as Like Like Plaza.

Steve Sombrero and Ryan Sakaguchi, executives with real estate brokerage firm Cushman &Wakefield ChaneyBrooks who represented the seller, said the 21,303-square-foot retail plaza was built in the 1990s by Roy and Dora Hayashi, the son-in-law and daughter of the couple who founded Like Like Drive Inn in 1953, James and Alice Nako.

“It has been an absolute joy to have continued our family’s legacy in operating the plaza and restaurant for so many years,” Julie Tateyama and Patti Okuhara, daughters of the Hayashis, said in a statement. “We are so appreciative to all who have been with Like Like Plaza from the beginning and have become a part of our family along the way. While we are physically bidding farewell to Like Like Plaza, the plaza and Like Like Drive Inn will forever remain a part of our family. As we start this next chapter in our lives, we are extremely excited for what’s ahead.”