Residential construction
to spark to life in Wailea
Developers are expected to add about 800 new homes to Maui's Wailea Resort beginning next year, responding to strong market demand in an area that saw little residential development throughout the 1990s.
Alexander & Baldwin Inc. said it recently sold about 50 acres for about $50 million in the resort that it launched in the 1970s. Three large parcels went to developers who plan residential projects, and A&B also plans to develop its own homes on another 200 acres that it has retained.
"We're seeing tremendous pent-up demand in Wailea and we're working as fast as we can to meet that demand," said Paul Hallin, senior vice president with A&B Properties.
The land sales also included 26 home lots sold to various individual buyers.
The transactions point to some opportunistic deal-making by one of Hawaii's largest private landowners. A&B had sold the Wailea properties for about $200 million in 1989 to Shinwa Golf Group, which had been aggressively acquiring golf and resort properties at the time.
But Shinwa ran into financial trouble and sold the land back to A&B for a mere $67 million last October. With its recent deals, A&B has resold less than one-fifth of those lands for about $50 million.
The 1,500-acre resort in South Maui includes six hotels, 472 single-family homes, 1,426 condominium units and 280,000 square feet of commercial space, most of which is at the upscale Shops at Wailea complex.
The buyers of the three main Wailea parcels include Seattle companies Popkin Development and Weinstein A/U Architects + Urban Designers, which plan to build 24 single-family homes on one of the parcels. CMI Group Hawaii, a Maui development firm, plans another 120 to 144 townhomes, and a unit of Canada-based GolfBC Group plans to develop a third site, though details have not yet been revealed.
A&B plans to develop another 25-acre site in partnership with Hawaii construction firm Armstrong Builders, and will release details soon, Hallin said.
A&B also has tentative plans to develop the remaining lands, totaling about 200 acres. Those lands are in a mauka section of the resort, and Hallin said A&B cannot proceed until it first builds a water tank to supply future developments.
Hallin said he expects the tank's design to be finished late this year and construction of it to begin soon after.
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