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By Ronen Ziberman, Star-Bulletin
The former NCR site is being used for mayoral
candidate Mufi Hannemann's headquarters.

Kapiolani building
on the block
for $7 million

Unity House bought the
former NCR site for
$5 million in 1998

---

By Tim Ruel
Star-Bulletin

Unity House has listed the former NCR building at 720 Kapiolani Blvd. -- now the red and black campaign headquarters for mayoral candidate Mufi Hannemann -- for sale at $7 million.

Commercial real estate company Grubb & Ellis recently started marketing the property, said Steven Bronstein, the firm's executive managing director.

One option entails selling the ground floor as condominium space, then using proceeds to renovate the rest of the five-story building as office space, he said yesterday.

Unity House bought the Kapiolani property for $5 million in 1998 from a unit of Dayton, Ohio-based NCR Corp., which had paid $15.5 million for it in December 1991. NCR stands for National Cash Register, now a telecommunications firm.

Unity House, currently operating from the penthouse of Eaton Square in Waikiki, had wanted to move its headquarters to the NCR property and build a retirement center there, spokesman Jim Boersma said yesterday. But now that the real estate market is rebounding, Unity House instead wants to see how much it could get for the NCR building, not having done any major improvements yet, Boersma said.

A multimillion-dollar nonprofit fund created in 1951 to benefit union employees, Unity House also owns 4.6 acres of agriculture land in Hauula, a fourth-floor condo at the Ilikai hotel, and a one-story building on Ala Wai Boulevard, which houses the Local 5 offices of the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union.

Hannemann, the only tenant in the otherwise empty 38,000-square foot NCR building, pays about $1,000 a month in rent. The property's semi-annual tax is $23,577.79, according to state records.