Luke family buys
downtown lot
The Luke family, which controls Hawaii National Bank and owns land near Honolulu airport, has purchased a nearly one-acre downtown parcel from Bank of Hawaii.
The family purchased the property for about $5.5 million, said Warren Luke, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Hawaii National Bank.
The property, at the corner of Nuuanu Avenue and Nimitz Highway, is directly adjacent to Hawaii National Bank's headquarters on North King Street and is the site of a Diamond Parking lot.
Luke said there were no immediate plans for the parcel.
"It was just a nice piece of property, one of the last parcels on the market downtown and a good link between Chinatown and downtown," he said.
However, he added: "There haven't been any brand-new buildings put up downtown for sometime. But we're not rushing into anything."
Luke said the purchase had nothing to do with Hawaii National Bank, the state's eighth largest bank with assets of $435 million. The property was purchased by 888 Nuuanu Avenue LLC, an affiliate of the Luke family's real estate investment arm, K.J.L. Associates.
Bank of Hawaii has had the property on the market for several years and came close to striking deals in the past. Most recently, San Diego developer IntraCorp LLC, which wanted to build a high-rise condominium on the 38,177-square-foot tract, signed a contract to purchase the property last year but the deal fell through.
The Luke family fortune was initially built by the late Kan Jung Luke, a real estate entrepreneur who founded Hawaii National Bank in 1960.
In 1956, the elder Luke and a partner pulled off what has been called one of the greatest coups in the history of Hawaii land sales, buying the 233-acre Damon Tract in the airport area for $4.5 million with just $100,000 down. Luke went on to add to his holdings over the years.
In addition to the airport tracts, the family also owns the Hawaiian Life Insurance Building at Kapiolani Boulevard and Piikoi Street.
