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Wal-Mart plans
megastore for
Keeaumoku

It would include a Wal-Mart and a
Sam's Club on 300,000 square feet

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By Tim Ruel
Star-Bulletin

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to build both a Wal-Mart and a Sam's Club on the 8.5-acre former "superblock" on Keeaumoku Street, with a massive combined retail space of 300,000 square feet, the company said today.

This marks Wal-Mart's first development in urban Honolulu and will take up most of a block bordered by Keeaumoku, Rycroft, Sheridan and Makaloa streets.

Wal-Mart will take up the ground floor, while Sam's Club will open on the second floor. Since Sam's Club is for members only, customers will have to leave each store to get into the other.

Wal-Mart is still reviewing specific design plans, and expects to finish by the end of the year, real estate representative Jon-Eric Greene said today. The building will take a theme of "territorial Hawaii."

"Say goodbye to retail as we know it," retail analyst and commercial real estate agent Stephany Sofos said. The development would be bigger than the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center, and its prices would pull business from everywhere in Honolulu, including Ala Moana Center, Sofos said.

The Wal-Mart complex will include 1,500 parking stalls on six levels for customers and the location's 850 employees, spokeswoman Cynthia Lin said. Construction is slated to begin next spring and both stores are expected to open by the spring of 2002.

Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart is opening more than 200 stores and 25 Sam's Clubs in the United States in the next three years. It estimates nationwide sales could grow 15 percent this year to $190 billion from $165 billion last year.

The world's largest "big box" retailer operates a two Wal-Mart stores in Mililani, Waipahu, Kailua-Kona, Hilo and Lihue, and a Sam's Club in Pearl City, employing 2,400 people.

The company told the Star-Bulletin in January it had agreed to buy the site of the former superblock. At the time, the company didn't know whether it would built a Wal-Mart, Sam's Club or a combination of the two. Real estate agent Steve Sofos had said the superblock would be worth more than $30 million.

The deal for the land has not closed, nor has Wal-Mart applied for its building permit with the city. Greene said Wal-Mart will finish designing first. The block will not require rezoning.

In April, the Ala Moana Neighborhood Board voted down a proposal to oppose the project, despite protests from more than 100 unionized grocery workers, who said Wal-Mart would bring unfair competition and below-average wages.

At the meeting, Wal-Mart district manager Jon Tow disputed the union's claims, saying the company offered competitive wages and fair pricing.

Developers have kicked around proposals for the vacant Keeaumoku site since the late 1980s. Haseko Hawaii Inc., which once planned a $400 million retail, luxury condominium and office project. The collapse of the state's economy stopped the project.