Flamingo Chuckwagon on market for $7.75 million

The family-owned Kapiolani Boulevard restaurant has been serving Hawaii's 'average people' for three decades

By Susan Kreifels
Star-Bulletin

The Flamingo Chuckwagon, a well-known restaurant along Kapiolani Boulevard for three decades, is up for sale at $7.75 million.

Dan Nagamine, president of the family-owned Flamingo Enterprises Inc., said his family is selling the property to pay off debts.

Meanwhile, the Flamingo Restaurant in Waipahu is scheduled to close on Wednesday because of slow business, but three other Flamingo restaurants - a second one on Kapiolani, one in Pearl City and one in Kaneohe - will remain open.

Nagamine said he has received offers for the Kapiolani property, including one from a large California restaurant chain to lease the property.

"But I don't have any offers firm in hand," he said.

The Flamingo Chuckwagon is the only restaurant property the family owns - what Nagamine called an astute business decision made by his father in 1967, the year the restaurant opened.

The Flamingo Chuckwagon and the Waipahu restaurant join a number of others that have shut down because of Hawaii's stale economy.

"We're in the same fishbowl," Nagamine said. "The number of customers going out is slow because of the economy."

The Chuckwagon employs about 50 people, and the Waipahu restaurant about 35. Many of the employees have been with the family company for decades. The first Flamingo restaurant opened in 1950 along Ala Moana Boulevard.

"The Flamingo restaurants have been serving a lot of blue-collar workers, the average people in Hawaii," said Jean Shimabukuro, vice president of Flamingo Enterprises.

"When times are down for them, we feel it too."

The Chuckwagon, a 52,000-square-foot, fee-simple property, first went on sale almost three years ago at $15 million.

The property has been listed at $7.75 million since November with international Realtor Terra Marketing, represented locally by Monroe and Friedlander Inc.

"We receive interest on the property every couple of days," said Doug Pothul, vice president of Monroe and Friedlander and regional director in the Hawaii and Pacific rim for Terra Marketing. "There's a lot of demand out there for this type of property. Along Kapiolani Boulevard it's the only piece of this size - one acre plus - that's available."

Pothul said most interest he's received since November has been local but the property will be listed with 35,000 investors around the world in February, Pothul said.

Nagamine said the 1998 assessed value for the building and land is about $11 million.

He also said there's a slim chance that the Waipahu restaurant may stay open if he can seal an employer-owner deal to cut costs. But he's not hopeful.