Maui to get
upscale mall
The Wailea complex will
By Jerry Tune and Russ Lynch
cost about $70 million
Star-BulletinDevelopers are expected to break ground in November for a 15-acre, $70 million upscale retail center to replace the Wailea Shopping Village at the Wailea Resort on Maui.
The two-story center, scheduled to open in the fall of 1999, will have 150,000 square feet of shops and restaurants.
The Shops at Wailea will include 40,000 square feet of fashion houses featuring European and American luxury designs, 40,000 square feet of restaurant space and 70,000 square feet of specialty shops featuring locally made items.
The location is near the Grand Wailea Resort Hotel & Spa and the Aston Wailea Resort.
The Wailea Resort area as a whole has 2,550 hotel rooms, 1,185 condominium units and 434 single-family homes and home sites, five golf courses and a tennis center.
The retail project's developer is Shops at Wailea LP, a partnership of Hawaii developer Bill Mills, Texas real estate developer Ross Perot Jr.'s Hillwood Development and the Louis Vuitton Malletier international retail business.
Perot, who teamed up with Mills in the middle of last year, oversees the Perot family's vast real estate holdings and is the majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. He is also the son of former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot.
The first Mills-Perot collaboration was an investment last year in the Maui Lani residential project near Wailuku, Maui.
Louis Vuitton is the first retailer to sign a lease for the Shops at Wailea.
"Louis Vuitton has been considering the Wailea area for a number of years," said Gary Hahn, vice president and chief operating officer of Louis Vuitton Hawaii Inc.
More than 700,000 tourists are estimated to stay at Wailea each year, the developers said.
"Retailers see Wailea as one of the best places for immediate growth," said Eric Smith, leasing director with Kaulana Corp., which is handling the center's leasing. "Because of the affluent West Coast visitor profile, Wailea has been spared the effects of Asia's economic fluctuations and the declining value of the yen."
According to the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau, most Japanese stay on Oahu. The current decline in tourist arrivals from Japan is hurting Oahu more than the other islands.
Mills said the Shops at Wailea already has received strong pre-leasing interest from local, statewide, national and international retailers.
Designs by Boston-based D'Agostino Izzo Quirk Architects and Architects Hawaii are using the style of the Territorial era in Hawaii, an early 19th century architecture like that of many buildings in Honolulu's Capitol District.
The developers said there will be a series of plazas and courtyards with fountains and tropical foliage.
The center will have more than 900 parking stalls and the Wailea Resort shuttle system will make regular stops there, the developers said.
The existing Wailea Shopping Village has been on the site for 20 years.
The Mills group said it will be torn down to make way for the new center.
