Hawai‘i Convention Center needs more than $15M quick fix for leaks

Gov. Josh Green has released $15 million in general obligation bonds so the Hawai‘i Convention Center can shore up a leaky rooftop terrace deck — but it’s just a temporary fix and costs for permanent repairs are projected to escalate over the next three years by at least 35% to $88 million.

Hawai‘i Convention Center General Manager Teri Orton said the $15 million was awarded last year by state lawmakers, who declined to outlay $64 million to permanently fix the deck.

Green noted the center, which opened in 1998 at a cost of $200 million, is a “highly important” venue for local organizations and events, as well as business travelers who come to Oahu for conferences.

“The rooftop repairs are needed to help keep this facility safe and welcoming,” he said in an email.

Orton said she didn’t know why the funds for the temporary fix had taken so long to get released. While thankful to the governor and state lawmakers, she is hopeful they might consider funding the full rooftop repair for the state asset, which with all its deferred maintenance is starting to mirror the challenges of the soon-to-be-demolished Aloha Stadium in Halawa.

“We’re on the pathway of the stadium, unfortunately. It’s very frustrating because this is a state asset and we are asking the state to fix their own building, and they keep kicking the can down the road without addressing the problem in its entirety,” Orton said. “The intent is, from what I hear, that they want to enter into some kind of private-public partnership.”

Orton said she favors a permanent fix that would include repairing two stairways and the rooftop terrace deck by adding pedestrian pavers and possibly a concrete overlay to increase loading capacity and resist future cracking. She also wants to cover 50% of the rooftop terrace with shades to cool the space, which would allow more utilization of the popular deck and eliminate the need for tents, while providing more options for clients in inclement weather.

Instead, she said, lawmakers supported a temporary repair, which would remove the rooftop terrace deck’s plastic square flooring and planters and paint on a leak-proof barrier; however, Orton said that would render the deck unusable. She also noted the temporary repair will not stop the underlying rust or corrosion from worsening, which over time could further weaken the facility’s support structure.

The center recently went through procurement for a project manager for the temporary repair and RLB was awarded the contract, according to Orton. The center took money out of its own capital improvement funds to start the planning process since officials weren’t sure when the $15 million would arrive, she said. Planning and permitting for the temporary project is expected to take another nine months.

Orton said that during the wait she hopes lawmakers will find a way to fund the permanent repair, as it will still need to be done eventually regardless of the temporary fix, which is expected to last only three to five years.

“It’s a waste of state taxpayer dollars to do a temporary fix knowing that the majority of that money is going to waste because we have to do the permanent repair at some point,” she said.

Multiple studies

For years water has been penetrating the center’s rooftop terrace deck, causing water intrusion into other parts of the building where there are now cracks, rust and calcium leaching from the concrete. Mold and mildew is a constant worry.

Prior plans to establish a Center for Hawaiian Music and Dance on the center’s rooftop put everything in limbo for 15 years, even though a $800,000 study found the project was too expensive and wasn’t feasible from an engineering standpoint.

Progress also has been mired by a series of recent studies — including one completed in February and another in the pipeline — that have made lawmakers reluctant to significantly invest in the aging building before its future plans, including the potential for public-private partnerships to add a hotel or develop a convention district, are determined.

A $50,000 Hawai‘i Convention Center Futures Study commissioned by the Hawaii Tourism Authority found that it would be possible from an engineering standpoint to affix a 600-room hotel to the side of the center, but stopped short of calculating construction and other costs.

Furthermore, Thomas Hazinski, managing director of HVS Convention, Sports, & Entertainment Facilities Consulting, who presented the study’s findings to HTA during its Feb. 23 meeting, said, “Any development relying on demand from the Hawai‘i Convention Center, including a hotel or convention district, would require a long-term solution to the roof repair.”

The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism is embarking on a separate $500,000 study to further explore highest and best uses for the center, including a public-private partnership. This effort, however, could potentially hit a snag since a state Senate committee on Thursday voted against recommending Green-appointee Chris Sadayasu as head of DBEDT. The full Senate still must vote on Sadayasu’s appointment, unless his nomination is withdrawn.

‘The word is out’

F. Kevin Aucello, founder and principal of Powell & Aucello, a full-service hotel real estate advisory firm, called the quest to explore a public-private partnership for the center “one of the dumbest ideas that I’ve ever heard.”

“First of all,” he said, “the state can’t get a public-­private partnership to build something that we need, which is the stadium for the University of Hawaii.”

Aucello also said there isn’t enough demand to justify another hotel in the convention center area at the gateway to Waikiki.

“The reality is that there are some sites nearby —right across the street and down a couple of blocks on Kapiolani — where people have luxury hotels planned and they can’t get off the ground,” he said.

Aucello also questioned the wisdom of spending $500,000 for another study on the center, which he said has far less chance of a successful public-private partnership than Aloha Stadium.

“The good news in the Aloha Stadium is they could give a private developer some land to develop retail and housing and stuff like that along with the stadium. That makes sense,” he said. “In this case, there’s just not that opportunity for a private developer to make a lot of money here because their cost to build a hotel will be expensive and it’s not going to pencil out.”

Aucello said the state’s transient accommodations tax was originally approved to pay for the center. Since it opened in 1998, he said, TAT revenues have grown exponentially and “there should be plenty of money to fix the center.”

“I love the way they are trying to just pass the buck on it by saying we’ll get someone in from the private sector to do this, when the reality is that they should just pay to fix the roof, or if it’s not worth it, just get rid of the thing.”

Orton said the convention center, which also serves as an emergency shelter when needed and was designed to return hundreds of millions in TAT to the state, is steadily depreciating. In addition to the permanent repair for the leaky rooftop, which is projected to cost more than $88 million by 2027, the center’s separate six-year $80 million capital improvement plan includes repairs for damages from other leaks, such as the third-floor planters from which water is pouring into the center’s back-of-the-house storage.

She pointed out that executing a public-private partnership could take another five or six years, which would exceed the three- to five-year viability of the temporary repair and further impair business.

“In the interim, if they are expecting us to maintain and manage this and run this as a world-class convention center in a highly desired destination then they have to fix the roof,” Orton said. “There’s no way that we can continue to sell the convention center in the state that it is. Our reputation, the integrity, everything is being compromised and the word is out.”

Rainwater damage

Leaking from the center’s rooftop terrace and from planters along the center’s grand staircase need to be addressed promptly. Since November 2021, Orton said, the center already has spent about $300,000 to repair damage from two rain events, one of which took out 10 of the facility’s 47 meeting rooms for about a month.

She said the center is still evaluating how much it will cost to fix the damage from last month’s storm, which removed four of the larger center concourse meeting rooms from service and forced the center to put out laundry bins to catch the water that has continued to run through the ceiling long after the rain.

“There’s so much moisture in the layers of the rooftop that we have to wait until all the moisture comes through all the layers and leaks out before we can start to dry everything out,” she said.

The last rain caused a 20-foot section of drywall to fall into the parking garage, which fortunately was devoid of cars.

“It’s a safety issue,” Orton said. “We actually even had a customer mention to an employee that she was sitting in the third-floor center concourse having lunch and a piece of drywall from the fourth-floor ceiling fell down into the atrium. She wanted to bring it to their attention because she felt it was dangerous.”

During a tour of the center Thursday, Director of Engineering Grant Castillo detailed its lingering problems after the last major rain. He pointed out rust and mildew in the stairwell on the Diamond Head side of the rooftop garden area. Near the stairwell and elevators, he noted exposed rebar in spalling near a capped planter.

Castillo drew attention to places where rain from leaky planters have saturated the center’s drywall, roofing and ceiling materials. He also noted a section of glass ceiling atop the Diamond Head conference area where a patch made of corrugated plastic sheets was noticeable.

There are still several laundry bins in conference room 316A, one of the center’s main meeting rooms, where when the rains are heavy enough, the water comes down “like a waterfall,” he said.

According to Orton, the undetermined factor is what the center’s structural integrity will look like in five years, and whether further damage will have rendered it unsalvageable.

“Will they have to do further repairs because they’ve neglected to remove the moisture from the existing areas now to avoid further corrosion?” she asked. “The longer they prolong this project the cost keeps escalating and the damage continues to gets worse.”

Convention center officials requested about $27 million from the Legislature as far back as 2017 to fix the rooftop deck, which was a problem even before the facility opened. However, legislators did not approve the improvements, which consultant Allana Buick & Bers Inc. said in 2012 were needed by 2017.

The consultant’s findings in a 2019 update found “the existing waterproofing membrane for the 4th level pedestrian plaza has reached the end of its serviceable life and is no longer preventing rainwater from entering the structure below. We know of no remedial repair, short of complete removal and replacement that can effectively mitigate the ongoing leakage.”

“We’re on borrowed time,” Orton said. “There’s no right answer to this other than fixing it.”