State backs rapid retail
build-out of Kakaako

Businesses will be needed
to serve medical center traffic

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By Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com

Development of 160 acres of state-owned land makai of Ala Moana could start in about a year, with retail complexes coming first, the state agency responsible for Kakaako says.

A fast start is needed because construction is about to begin on the John A. Burns School of Medicine and that will attract people to the area, said Teney K. Takahashi, director of planning and development for the Hawaii Community Development Authority its board of directors meeting this morning.

Takahashi was reporting on a preliminary plan made by a business-plan subcommittee of the HCDA. He said retailers outside the HCDA makai parcel will quickly move ahead with plans of their own to attract the students, faculty and visitors the medical school will bring to the area and HCDA should be first.

Residential development would follow much later.

The HCDA is considering 300-400 homes for middle-income people on the property makai of Ala Moana, with most of the residential construction on the other side of the street. The 13-acre commercial section at Point Panic should be designed as an "icon for Hawaii," as the Sydney Opera House is for Australia, Takahashi said.

Housing would be built to curve around and conceal mid-rise parking structures.

Takahashi said the HCDA would have to spend $131 million on the infrastructure over the next 10 years. Sales of fee-simple homes in the area should bring the state $11 million to $15 million, he said.