Kmart set to
expand in Kapolei
The store will be the
By Peter Wagner
fourth on Oahu and
the seventh in the state
Star-Bulletin
The "Second City" of Kapolei will move a step closer to its urban goal with the addition of a major department store next year.
Landowner James Campbell Estate yesterday announced that Kmart Corp. will build a 135,000-square-foot Big Kmart store west of the Kapolei Entertainment Center next year.
"Big Kmart will be a boon to the Kapolei region," said Donna Goth, director of properties for the Campbell Estate.
The Troy, Mich.-based discount department store operator, the second-largest retailer in the country behind Wal-Mart Stores Inc., currently operates in Iwilei, Salt Lake and Waikele on Oahu and in Lihue, Kahului, and Kailua-Kona on neighbor islands. The company operates more than 2,160 stores nationwide.
Goth said the project will create 200 permanent jobs and 200 temporary jobs during construction. The project is to start later this year and be completed by late next year, she said.
The new store will bring to 12 the number of projects completed or under construction in Kapolei this year, Goth said. Scheduled for completion next year is a civic center; high school; nursing facility; Shell/Jack-in-the-Box; AAAAA Rent-A-Space, and Kapolei Park Plaza. Kapolei decades ago was designated a "second city" by municipal planners trying to ease commuter traffic into Honolulu's urban core. The city, almost entirely on land owned by the Campbell Estate, is adjacent Barbers Point Harbor, a man-made deep draft harbor built to relieve pressure on Honolulu's overtaxed commercial port.
But development has been mostly confined to housing until recent years when Campbell Estate led the way for employers by moving its headquarters into the area.
