Best Buy will join Costco,
Home Depot in Iwilei

The major electronics chain plans
to open the store this summer

Best Buy Co., the nation's largest consumer electronics chain, said it will open its first isle store in Iwilei this summer.

The Minneapolis-based retailer said it has signed a lease with Castle & Cooke Inc. for a 45,000-square foot location in Iwilei at the corner of Alakawa Street and Nimitz Highway.

The much-anticipated new store, located next to Costco and Home Depot, will employ more than 120 full-time and part-time workers by the time it opens in mid-summer, said Best Buy Spokesman Jay Musolf.

Musolf said the company plans to open another 45,000-square foot outlet in October at the site of the former Tony Honda dealership on Kamehameha Highway in Aiea.

That store, which is already under construction, will employ about 150 part-time and full-time workers and will cost between $8 million and $10 million to build.

Best Buy's entry into the Hawaii will bring new competition to the consumer electronics market, which is dominated by Circuit City and CompUSA.

It also comes after Castle & Cooke has revamped Iwilei. The landowner scrapped its costly Dole Cannery factory outlet center in 1998 and later attracted Home Depot and Costco to open new stores on the Ewa end of Iwilei.

Best Buy -- which operates 820 retail stores nationwide -- said yesterday that the Hawaii stores are among 21 new locations that it plans to open nationwide in 2005.