Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Kodak Building
sold to furniture
concern

Sources say the price
is between $13 million
and $14 million

---

By Tim Ruel
Star-Bulletin

The Nevada owner of a local furniture store is buying the 3.4-acre Kodak Building site on Kapiolani Boulevard to expand a planned $25 million retail design center in Kakaako.

Thomas Sorensen, who owns Inspiration Furniture at Pearlridge Center, is closing on the fee-simple purchase in a few weeks, real estate broker Colliers Monroe Friedlander said yesterday.

The Kodak Building, once the headquarters of Eastman Kodak Co.'s Hawaii operations, sits across from McKinley High School and is mostly bounded by Kapiolani, Kamakee and Waimanu streets. The pending sale also includes a parcel makai of the building, located between Waimanu and Kawaiahao Street.

Sources familiar with the deal said the purchase price falls between $13 million and $14 million, nearly one-third of what the previous owner paid a decade ago. Agent Douglas Pothul declined to comment on the sale price.

Sorensen, through HDC Properties LLC, is purchasing the properties from Japan-based Fukuoka Jisho, which paid $44.7 million for them in 1990. South Korean conglomerate Daewoo Corp. was originally going to partner with Fukuoka to build a 500-unit, 30-story condominium project on the site in 1995. The idea was dropped a year later though, and Fukuoka put the property on the market for $30 million.

The Kodak site consists of one three-story, 57,000-square-foot main structure, built in 1939, plus six smaller buildings. Sorensen is expected to raze the entire property and use a chunk of it to expand his planned Honolulu Design Center. The bulk of the square footage is expected to go back on the market.

Sorensen last year announced plans to build a five-story design center next door to the Kodak Building at the site of the former Flamingo Chuckwagon restaurant, a 52,000-square-foot property that he purchased for $4.9 million in November 1999.

Sorensen is well versed in the retail furniture business, having founded Scan/Design Furniture in 1979 and partnered in Scan/Line Office Interiors. He has since moved on from the companies and opened Inspiration Furniture at Pearlridge in 1997. Sorensen now lives in Reno, Nev.