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The Hawaii Community Development Authority was created nearly 50 years ago with a broad-purpose name despite having a singular initial focus: improving one community, Kakaako.
Today, several years after unsuccessful legislative attempts to abolish the agency, HCDA has a large, and growing, mixed bag of work.
State lawmakers in May appropriated more than $200 million to the agency, including about $120 million to develop infrastructure around three city rail stations.
HCDA also is helping facilitate development of a new community around Aloha Stadium in Halawa; it has a lead project management role for a first-responder training campus in Mililani; and it is tasked with infrastructure development on Maui to support state projects including a new jail.
Another new job for the agency: devising a program for developing affordable high-density leasehold condominiums on public land near existing or potential future rail stations on Oahu.
And HCDA might even help manage further expansion of the Women’s Community Correctional Center in Kailua.
“It’s not sort of the same HCDA, for sure,” said Craig Nakamoto, executive director of the quasi- independent agency overseen by a board of directors that includes state administrators and community members.
All told, HCDA with a staff of 23 now has seven development districts in its jurisdiction, including one covering multiple transit- oriented development areas on Oahu and three neighbor island counties, as well as a few special projects assisting other state agencies with development work.
When HCDA was created by the Legislature in 1976 as a tool specifically for urban renewal, the agency’s objective was to improve what had become a largely near-blighted industrial area — roughly 400 acres in Kakaako bounded by Ala Moana Boulevard and King, Piikoi and Punchbowl streets — under prior city governance.
The agency was given zoning control of this piece of Honolulu’s urban core, along with power to improve road and utility infrastructure using public money and assessments on private landowners benefiting from upgrades.
Costly infrastructure improvements were intended to prompt redevelopment by private landowners under new regulations that also would produce public benefits including parks and affordable housing.
HCDA’s work over several decades in Kakaako, including 200 acres makai of Ala Moana Boulevard added to the agency’s jurisdiction during the 1980s, facilitated high-rise residential development, retail centers, public parks, affordable housing, the University of Hawaii’s John A. Burns School of Medicine and other projects.
Kakaako infrastructure work has cost more than $225 million and isn’t quite done. In May the Legislature appropriated $18.5 million for HCDA to improve a section of Ilaniwai Street.
Yet some lawmakers in 1976 foresaw a potential future need to expand HCDA’s jurisdiction, and the agency’s enabling legislation then known as “the Kakaako bill” included flexibility to create other urban renewal districts for HCDA.
Lawmakers first did this with a twist in 1993 when they directed HCDA to help stabilize the economy of rural Hamakua on Hawaii island after the closure of what had been the second- largest sugar plantation in Hawaii, Hamakua Sugar Co., which put 600 people out of work.
Hamakua became a rural community development district for HCDA, which received $1 million to produce a community support plan.
This district, however, was short-lived because the Legislature in 1994 redirected its appropriation to immediate relief programs and repealed HCDA’s new district.
It wasn’t until 2002 when HCDA was given its first lasting district outside Kakaako: 3,700 acres of the former Barbers Point Naval Air Station now known as Kalaeloa. The Navy closed the base in 1999, and landownership was largely transferred to the state, city and a private developer.
Needs for Kalaeloa were similar to Kakaako because of substandard infrastructure, and HCDA crafted zoning regulations for redevelopment.
Appropriations this year for HCDA work in Kalaeloa include $12 million to improve Saratoga Avenue and $47 million to upgrade electrical utility infrastructure that is still part of a Navy system and intended for conveyance to Hawaiian Electric.
“It’s not reliable,” Nakamoto said of Kalaeloa’s electrical grid.
Unique additions
In 2011 the Legislature saw fit to have HCDA take on a more unusual district comprising about 400 acres of Windward Oahu wetlands at Heeia.
The agency’s role for this area is “to facilitate culturally appropriate agriculture, education, and natural-resource restoration and management.” Kako‘o ‘Oiwi, a nonprofit community organization, is doing that work under a lease arranged by HCDA, which aims to have a land trust take over the agency’s Heeia stewardship role.
Another unique addition was made in 2019 when the Legislature gave HCDA the lead role in forming a private-public partnership to redevelop the state’s 98-acre Aloha Stadium site, envisioned to become a mixed-use community anchored by a new stadium under a new development district for the agency. Later, though, HCDA was relegated to helping with the project led by the state Department of Accounting and General Services.
In 2022 the Legislature created two more HCDA districts. One is for 988 acres on Maui. The other covers 21 transit-oriented development, or TOD, zones on Oahu around existing or planned city rail stations as well as neighbor island TOD zones mainly around bus hubs.
The Maui district, Pulehunui, was created so HCDA can improve infrastructure that supports development projects under existing county zoning rules for the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, a possible new Judiciary complex and a new Maui jail, according to Nakamoto.
Lawmakers in 2022 appropriated $64 million for HCDA’s Pulehunui work, though the agency has yet to form a board making decisions for this district.
HCDA has one general board as well as boards for each district that include core board members and other people typically from the community in a district.
Like Pulehunui, HCDA’s TOD districts do not yet have boards. They are also regulated by existing county zoning rules, and staff work has begun on projects.
Lawmakers appropriated about $120 million in the state budget this year for HCDA infrastructure work in three TOD zones, including $86 million for neighboring zones in Iwilei and Kapalama where state officials are trying to develop affordable housing on state land while also enabling mixed-use development on private land.
Nakamoto said HCDA is charged with making upgrades to electrical, water and sewer systems that complement a similar effort by the city, which estimates that $760 million to $910 million in such work will be needed in the two TOD zones where rail transit is projected to begin operating in 2031.
“I think the state can be a catalyst to get this done,” Nakamoto said. “Like Kakaako, this is the kind of infrastructure to spur development.”
In a TOD zone next to the University of Hawaii West Oahu where rail service is slated to begin June 30, HCDA has been directed to develop roads on 20 acres of undeveloped UH land to support development of a long-envisioned university village.
The Legislature appropriated $35 million for these roads and $2 million for HCDA to determine broader infrastructure needs around the same station to support public and private development.
Side projects
Outside HCDA development districts, the agency is being marshalled for special projects.
The biggest one of these is the First Responder Technology Campus planned for up to 19 state, county and federal law enforcement, fire, defense and other emergency response agencies on 243 acres of state land in Mililani. HCDA is tasked with helping another state agency, the Hawaii Technology Development Corp., deliver this project, estimated to cost $315 million to $470 million.
The Legislature appropriated $50 million in the state budget to HTDC this year to start construction, and HCDA’s role includes infrastructure planning and design work for an initial phase along with planning and design work for a new headquarters at the site for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.
Lawmakers also passed a bill this year directing HCDA to establish a program for developing high-density leasehold condos near Oahu rail stations for sale under 99-year land leases that would make such new homes affordable to residents.
The Legislature appropriated $1.5 million to HCDA to craft program rules and do planning work that includes evaluating sites owned by the state and county near rail stations.
One more side project for HCDA could be a Women’s Community Correctional Center expansion in Kailua.
The Department of Public Safety has asked HCDA to help procure construction of a new kitchen building and infrastructure at the jail. Under the plan, funding appropriated to Public Safety for the estimated $17.6 million project would be transferred to HCDA.
Nakamoto said HCDA is adapting to all the new work thrown its way, often without additional staff resources, and in November produced a new strategic plan for guidance.
“The vision for the future of HCDA needs to recognize the need to keep focused on overseeing the revitalization and growth of its existing community development districts; administering the new community and infrastructure improvement districts; and leveraging its unique strengths and expertise in assisting other state agencies,” the plan states.
Challenges noted in the plan include shifts in political support, lack of consistent funding and too many projects that stretch staff capacity and board focus.
HCDA PURVIEW
Districts, rough size
>> Kakaako: 400 acres
>> Kakaako Makai: 200 acres
>> Kalaeloa: 3,700 acres
>> Heeia: 400 acres
>> Stadium: 98 acres
>> Pulehunui: 988 acres
>> Transit-oriented development: various
Other projects
>> First Responder Technology Campus planning and design work
>> Affordable leasehold condominium development program creation
>> Women’s Community Correctional Center expansion procurement
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