Unless the Legislature reconvening Wednesday does something to prevent it, Oahu’s first and only innovation and business incubation facility likely will soon find itself homeless, and for no good reason.

Lawmakers should act to preserve the home the facility already has and, at least for the near term, postpone the proposed investment in a new $22 million complex, an expenditure that would strain the state’s fiscal condition.

The Manoa Innovation Center now operates out of a Woodlawn Drive facility that its developer, the High Technology Development Corp. (HTDC), leases for a nominal fee from the University of Hawaii, an arrangement due to expire in 2015.

The Legislature last year held a bill that would have extended the lease of the Manoa center, at the urging of UH administrators who want the property to revert to university control. That measure, House Bill 71, passed the House and was recommended for passage by the Senate higher education and economic development committees, but stalled in the Ways and Means Committee.

That panel should take it up again, especially in light of the current UH policy to tackle its backlog of repairs to its existing campus buildings before taking on additional facilities.

There are no firm plans for how UH would use the vacated center. In its testimony before the Senate last year, the administration indicated that although the Manoa facility is expected to be a base for activities for "the development of a robust research and technology industry," officials are "still in the formative stages of defining exactly what form and structure will best support this needed innovation agenda."

HTDC argued for extension of the lease at that time, but now seems to have put its hopes in getting a new home in a proposed $22 million complex the Hawaii Community Development Authority is now planning for a 6-acre site adjacent to the John A. Burns School of Medicine.

Described as a technology and innovation complex, that project would encompass a parking structure with up to 900 stalls, 150,000 square feet of building space for UH, 50,000 square feet for the technology agency and other elements.

State lawmakers appropriated $3 million in 2012 for HTDC to plan and design a new headquarters, and HTDC spent $275,000 of that on the Kakaako site selection. HCDA now gets the balance to further plan the complex.

But the question is whether now is the time to spend the rest of that money and commit to allocating the multimillions more for construction. That move would certainly run contrary to what is ostensibly a partial moratorium on new construction for UH. Although there is a list of exceptions to the moratorium — projects seen as already in progress or critical to university programs — this complex is not among them.

If this project ever does go forward, it should be at a juncture when there are fewer demands on the state’s facilities budget, or when more private funds can be secured to help pay for it. And that’s unlikely to happen before the Manoa Innovation Center’s existing lease expires next year.

HTDC has operated the innovation center since 1994 to nurture startup high-technology small businesses, and seems to have done so successfully. Its programs supporting the businesses have been self-supporting, funded by sublease rent income paid by the fledgling companies.

It’s a business model that has worked, and there seems little reason to change it now, by forcing HTDC to find emergency quarters elsewhere. Extending the lease for at least several years plainly makes sense, both for the businesses helped by the center and for the taxpayers.