Kapolei Hale turns 15

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the opening of Kapolei Hale, which was regarded in 2001 as a pivotal investment in development and growth of the Ewa region.

Kapolei was formally designated as a secondary urban center nearly 40 years ago, and the building of a Honolulu County government services center was envisioned as a way to help spur development and create jobs in a “Second City” that would allow residents to work in the community they live in.

Development and growth of Kapolei as Oahu’s Second City continues to be a contentious point for many, more than 25 years after master developer Campbell Estate, now known as the James Campbell Co., broke ground on the city of Kapolei.

“This idea of creating a Second City, I think … makes a certain level of sense,” said Karl Kim, an urban planner who has taught at the University of Hawaii for 30 years. “But at the same time, too, there are many, many factors that affected the planning. … It’s not just homes and a transportation system. It’s businesses. It’s government services. It’s infrastructure. This points to really what makes planning challenging.”

The $23 million Kapolei Hale opened with a satellite city hall, a driver’s license office, a large conference room and a building permit office. Plans for the three-story building on Uluohia Street were unveiled in 1996 with the goal to provide more government services and spur development.

The 100,000-square-foot facility served on average more than 800 customers per day last year and is the base for an estimated 200 city workers. Kapolei Hale also hosts numerous City Council meetings and hearings, as well as other community gatherings, Christmas decorations and student artwork.

John DeSoto, the Leeward Coast city councilman when it opened, said it is a symbol of the government’s role in developing the Second City.

“Kapolei Hale was the piko (center),” said DeSoto, a longtime Makaha Valley resident who represented the Leeward Coast for 16 years. “It draws people to come here and get things done. By having this out here, you give people opportunities.”

An estimated $11 billion from both public and private sectors has been invested in major infrastructure and commercial and industrial improvements in the Kapolei region of about 110,000 residents, according to a 2014 analysis by Plasch Econ Pacific LLC, a Campbell consultant. The amount excludes most small projects and all residential development and land costs.

Kapolei was designated as Oahu’s secondary urban center in 1977. The Ewa master plan, developed by Campbell Estate, called for a mixture of urban, agricultural, commercial and industrial uses. Campbell broke ground on the city of Kapolei in 1990. In 1998 the state opened an office building in Kapolei with about 1,000 workers, followed by the opening of the $49 million Kapolei High School in 2000.

Population projections show that the region will grow to about 143,300 by 2025 and to nearly 170,000 by 2035, according to 2015 data from Plasch Econ Pacific. The region is expected to have about 14 percent of Oahu’s population by 2025 and 16 percent by 2035, according to the city Department of Planning and Permitting in its 2010 annual report.

Gary Okino, a city planner from the 1960s to 2000 who headed the planning division of what is now the DPP for about eight years, said there were no options to limit growth, so planners had to find ways to accommodate it. Okino pointed to rail and transit-oriented developments as key to Kapolei’s future.

“You got to put people somewhere,” said Okino, who served as a city councilman for about 10 years after retiring from his planning role. “This secondary urban center of higher densities really provided a great answer for taking care of our future growth without creating more sprawl. (But) you cannot tell people where they got to live and where they got to work. It’s their choice.”

But some other planners and residents are concerned about the growth and future of Kapolei.

“Kapolei is a planning disaster,” said Panos Prevedouros, a civil engineer who has taught at UH for 25 years and specializes in transportation engineering and infrastructure sustainability. “It’s a bedroom community. It didn’t develop into a Second City. It developed as pure mainland-style suburbia.”

Prevedouros said traffic congestion and the lack of infrastructure and jobs point to Kapolei continuing on the path to become “Anywhere, USA.”

George Atta, DPP director, said Kapolei should have been developed with higher densities and in clusters, adding that building heights are 150 feet. Kapolei should grow in nodes, with each having its own characteristics and that should eventually connect — similar to downtown Honolulu and its Ala Moana, Kakaako and Waikiki neighborhoods, he said.

“I think we should’ve identified key open spaces first and then preserved them. I think the focus was too much about agriculture, and so when the decision was do you preserve agriculture or not … it became an either/or decision,” said Atta, a former Group 70 International principal who was appointed DPP director in 2013. “It was a little bit too simple-minded. We still have some of those options, but I think we lost some of the spread of the development pattern.”

But Atta said Kapolei “has good bones” for future growth, and pointed to the promise of new, denser developments such as the 1,100 homes at Mehana at Kapolei, which will provide a mix of retail, office and residential uses, and the 499 rental units at Kapolei Lofts. He said he hopes rail will eventually extend through Kapolei and to Ko Olina.

City Councilwoman Kymberly Pine, a 15-year Ewa Beach resident who was elected in 2012 to represent the Leeward Coast, said the growth of Kapolei has given more families homeownership opportunities. She said some residents who might have opted to not head to college now can attend UH West Oahu.

“This is where families are starting their dreams,” said Pine, who previously served as a state representative. “I think by the time my daughter graduates from high school, which will be 18 years from now, I think this is going to be a really fabulous city that a lot of people are going to want to live in.”

But Pine added that she does not want Kapolei to turn into downtown Honolulu, “where you don’t see the sky sometimes.”

DeSoto, the former city councilman, agreed that development in Kapolei has helped to create a “win-win situation” for residents to live and work in the area. But he acknowledged others disagree with the Second City concept. It’s a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation, he said.

“We always complain about this development this, and this development that. Of course, a lot of people (were) not going to be happy,” DeSoto said. “(But) we saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes when you say Second City it’s like Honolulu is the highest and Kapolei is the second. No. They say it’s a new city, so it’s like an equal and an even.”

Planners and officials said that in addition to housing, a key component to developing Kapolei is jobs, which are expected to increase from nearly 63,000 last year to 84,000 by 2025 and to 103,400 by 2035, according to Plasch Econ Pacific. The goal, several say, is for Kapolei to host a variety of “live, work, play” options so that residents do not have to fight rush-hour traffic for jobs in Honolulu.

The number of regional service jobs is projected to increase from about 8,100 to 55,500 from 2000 to 2035, and retail is estimated to jump from 2,500 jobs in 2000 to nearly 20,000 by 2035. By 2035 the Kapolei region is expected to host 15 percent of Oahu’s jobs, second to Honolulu with 63 percent, according to DPP. That is a shift from 2000, when the Kapolei region had 4 percent of the island’s jobs and Honolulu had 72 percent.

More jobs in the region could be generated with the promise of planned mixed-use projects, such as Ka Makana Alii, a 1.4 million-square-foot regional shopping center that broke ground last year; a 180-room Embassy Suites; and the leasing of 168 acres of vacant land around UH West Oahu for mixed-use development. Redevelopment and revitalization of Kalaeloa is underway after Barbers Point Naval Air Station closed in 1999.

Steve Kelly, vice president of development for 10 years at Kapolei Properties LLC, a Campbell affiliate, said “the bones are in place with the infrastructure now being largely complete in the city of Kapolei.”

“I think we’ve been successful since the groundbreaking over the last 25 years, which is a relatively short period of time for a city to come into being and evolve. The challenge will be going forward to keep government investment flowing into Kapolei,” Kelly added. “By and large we have had a tremendous amount of community support for development. The reason for that is most folks out here bought into Kapolei knowing that it was the area designated for growth.”

But some argue that these efforts are not enough to keep up with future residential developments, such as the 11,750-home Hoopili project on the Ewa plain.

Kioni Dudley, president and founder of the nonprofit Friends of Makakilo, described Kapolei as “upcoming” but worries about sprawling developments and that the population seems to be growing faster than job creation. Dudley, a 27-year Makakilo resident and vice chairman of the Makakilo/Kapolei/Honokai Hale Neighborhood Board, added that “we have a long way yet to go” to fix traffic problems and generate more jobs.

“I think that we really don’t have a city yet,” said Dudley, who has advocated against Hoopili and rail. “We need jobs. We need good-paying jobs. We need a city that will give us good-paying jobs.”

Councilwoman Pine pointed to efforts to boost regional job growth, including the Hire Leeward initiative held in partnership with the Kapolei Chamber of Commerce that connects residents to jobs.

Several state lawmakers have introduced bills that would give income tax credit to businesses that open in or relocate to the Kapolei region.

Kiran Polk, executive director of the Kapolei Chamber of Commerce, said the state tax incentive measure could create an estimated 3,000 jobs over the next 20 years in the Kapolei region, if passed through the Legislature.

“I think the progression is there. I think it’s a combination of all these different efforts,” Polk said. “Kapolei is its own identity. I think Kapolei is on its way. We’re on that road.”

Kim, the urban planner, said part of the problem is that many factors, including the housing market and tourism trends, have changed since the 1970s, making Kapolei’s development even more challenging.

“I think the jury is still out on that,” Kim said of Kapolei’s future. “On the one hand, I see the potential for this to be a young, vibrant growing area, a place where potentially there could be a lot more energy and activity … because of the affordability of housing (and) because of the opportunity to start and build new businesses. But on the other hand, I see that there are large issues of planning, of coordination, of making some key decisions about where we want to concentrate development and what type of development we’d like to have.”

Atta of the DPP added that Kapolei might need two more decades to become a “complete city.”

“I’ve seen the vision change,” said Atta, who added that Kapolei should not mimic Honolulu. “I think the people out on the Leeward side would like to see it have its own character. At the end of the day, Kapolei should be Kapolei.”