Hawai'i Community Development Authority

Hunt is working to revitalize nearly 540 acres in Kalaeloa — what has been named Kalaeloa Town — aiming to transform the former naval land into a mixed-use, master-planned community, according to information provided on its website.

That work has so far included the development of the Daniel Kahikina Akaka VA Clinic, which opened in April, and the 2015 renovation of Kalaeloa Professional Center, the conversion of former military housing into the Wakea Garden Apartments, as well as building needed infrastructure and retrofitting structures originally built by the U.S. Navy for residential, commercial and recreational use.

Kalaeloa itself is comprised of nearly 3,700 acres in West Oahu, land that was actively used by the U.S. Navy as Naval Air Station Barbers Point for more than five decades before it was closed in 1999, the information noted.

In June 2002, then-Gov. Ben Cayetano signed a law that transferred responsibility for Kalaeloa from the Barbers Point Naval Air Station Redevelopment Commission to the Hawaii Community Development Authority, the HCDA website notes.

According to Lee, in response to follow-up questions from PBN, Hunt owns and manages more than 530 acres in Kalaeloa, including 238 acres which it owns fee simple and 292 acres still under a ground lease with the Navy. Approximately 25 years are left on a 40-year ground lease, whereby the fee title gets conveyed to Hunt at the end of the term.

History of Kalaeloa

According to a draft update of the HCDA’s Kalaeloa master plan, the area — known for two centuries as Barbers Point — was named for Henry Barber, captain of the Arthur, a ship that sank during a 1796 hurricane. Barber and other survivors washed up near Kalaeloa.

Nearly 70 years later, James Campbell purchased the land as part of a larger purchase of 41,000 acres of flat land in Ewa that was to be used in the cultivation of sugar cane, the plan noted.

The Navy leased 150 acres from the Campbell Estate in 1925 and began construction of Ewa Field a decade later. In 1940, the plan noted that the Navy purchased approximately 3,500 acres of land at Barbers Point, “allowing it to expand Ewa Field as the Marine Corps Air Station and to construct the [Naval Air Station Barbers Point].”

When Hunt took over its lands in 2007, there were about 12 tenants in 55 buildings, representatives for the company told PBN. The developer now has 70 tenants across 4 million square feet in 35 active buildings, including public charter school DreamHouse Ewa Beach, Coral Crater Adventure Park and Navy Exchange Touch ‘N Go Mini-Mart and Service station. A full list of current tenants can be found online here.

So far, Hunt has invested roughly $260 million in Kalaeloa since 2007, Lee said.

“Our vision is to see Kalaeloa become a thriving community again — to have it be a place with affordable housing where local families can find jobs and create full lives with convenient activities, services, entertainment and recreation opportunities all around them,” Colón said in response to follow-up questions from PBN.

Serving veterans

The first stop on the driving tour was the new Daniel Kahikina Akaka VA Clinic.

The $130 million, 88,675-square-foot multi-speciality outpatient clinic sits on 9.5 acres of the developer’s Kalaeloa land. Hunt owns the building and leasing to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

The VA clinic is located on the western edge of Hunt’s Kalaeloa property, Colón said, and has allowed the developer to bring in more modern infrastructure.

“So for us, this is the beginning of the new development activity that we see happening,” Colón told PBN while standing in front of the facility. “… Basically, it kick starts the overall development activity that we’ve been trying to get going for many, many years.”

According to the developers, the construction of the project, including the building, roads and all utilities infrastructure, took three years to complete, but the proposal for the lease was submitted in 2017 and the lease award was made in March 2021.

“So it was actually almost seven years in the making,” Lee said. “And in between, we all know what happened was Covid. … This project his every obstacle known to mankind — Capitol Hill to Covid-related delays with procurement, supply chain … everything was delayed and then multiplied by the fact that everything has to be shipped [into the state] on a boat. The construction budget increased significantly, yet we were still able to get this project financed and built.”

Lee said there wasn’t a “special solution” to navigating challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic, “other than we had a really capable and experienced team.”

Colón gave kudos to the project’s contractor, Nan, Inc.

“Because you’re right, Covid presented tremendous challenges due to supply chain disruptions,” he said. “… Our contractor was able to adapt to those shortages by shifting work to other parts of the project. So their flexibility played a key role in enabling the project to be completed on time.”

Colón, himself a Navy veteran, said it’s gratifying for Hunt to have completed the project.

“It means a lot to me personally as a veteran, as a retired Navy officer, to be part of the future military medical care on the West Side [of Oahu], because this is the facility that I will be using,” he said. “We are also excited about the fact that this wonderful facility has kick-started and really it’s served now as the beginning of the new development activity at Kalaeloa.”

Colón said that the new clinic provides West Oahu veterans “nearby, close, convenient local access to medical care,” without having to drive to Tripler Army Medical Center.

Hunt also plans to sell approximately 10 acres near the VA clinic — at the crossroads of Kamokila Boulevard and Franklin D. Roosevelt Avenue — that Colón said could be used for additional medical support, office or commercial space, or even a hotel.

That property has been listed by Nathan Fong and Andy Kazama with Colliers International Hawaii.

On an adjacent parcel, work is underway on Gentry Homes’ Kaulu Townhomes, the second stop on the driving tour. Lee said Hunt’s $38 million investment of offsite infrastructure enabled the development of the first 50 acres of its Kalaeloa property, 30 of which were sold to Gentry in 2021 for the construction of nearly 400 homes.

Infrastructure costs make development efforts “very challenging,” Colón said. “It’s making us focus hard on other financing vehicles, other financing structures. Specifically, we’re looking into seeing if there’s some public financing of the type that they use over on the Mainland to facilitate that because the cost of infrastructure makes it really, really hard.”

But as construction crews work on the homes in the background, Colón said it’s gratifying to see the progress being made, “especially to see housing going in, knowing how critical the need for affordable housing is here in Hawaii.”

Other Kalaeloa developments

Wakea Garden Apartments, which opened in 2015, offers 100 affordable one-bedroom, one-bath housing units in an adaptive reuse of former naval housing.

Colon said the once-dilapidated building was completely gutted.

How does he feel about the adaptive reuse trends that are seen now?

“We feel like we’re one of the pioneers of that because … we’ve been doing adaptive reuse for 20 years now over here, just at the base alone. … Previous to even working on this, we were doing that on other projects. So, that’s really been our story. It’s been to take these old, under-used, dilapidated buildings and give them new life — breathing new life into old, underutilized, closed-down buildings.”

As he drives, Colón points out a parcel the developer is hoping will become a new affordable housing project.

According to Colon, Hunt is under contract with an affordable housing developer proposing a 260-unit project on 3.5 acres, and who is expected to submit the project to the Hawaii Housing Finance Development Corp. in the spring.

“We’re hoping that they get selected because if they get selected, that will be a new affordable housing project coming to Kalaeloa,” he said.

Challenges in redevelopment

Aside from a global pandemic, the developers have faced other challenges in redeveloping its Kalaeloa land.

“Converting a former military base, which was built under federal jurisdiction, federal guidelines, federal zoning, converting that and adapting it then to local state, city and county uses, is a significant challenge,” Colón said. “You have different design standards, different road widths, all kinds of different requirements that had to be reconciled in order for us to make progress. And not only that, you have HCDA guidelines and rules that are different from the city and county.”

As an example, Colón noted conflicting width requirements for Franklin D. Roosevelt Avenue.

“We had to get that resolved because on one hand, we couldn’t get a building permit unless it met City and County [of Honolulu] design [standards], but in order to meet the city and county design [requirements], it was not complying with the HCDA design guidelines,” he said. “That was a whole Rubik’s cube that we had to navigate.”

“That’s one of many examples,” Lee said.

Colón said, too, that when properties owned by the federal government are converted to private use, the zoning reverts to “preservation” zoning, with the idea being that the new private owner and developer then has to go through a new zoning process to use the land.

Hunt also acquired the Navy’s water system, which Colón said had been “under-maintained, under-capitalized” for years, and invested “a couple million dollars into it, we stabilized the system … then we had to work with the [state] Public Utilities Commission to be able to then go ahead and transfer the system over to another private property and to get it all legal within Board of Water Supply requirements.”

“No other development company would have gone ahead and acquired a private water system, but we had to do it as [we held] the keys to our destiny,” Lee said.

Looking ahead

When asked about the company’s immediate next steps in Kalaeloa, Colón said Hunt is finishing “much-needed road improvements” around the new VA clinic and Kaulu by Gentry Homes to improve traffic flow, access and circulation to the area.

“We are proud to have initiated the transformation that is underway in Kalaeloa, bringing life back and turning the lights on in the area. We have created momentum that is clearly gathering more steam now,” Colón said in the follow-up. “As a veteran myself, I am extremely proud that through the development of the Daniel Kahikina Akaka VA Clinic, we have greatly improved access to healthcare for Hawaii’s veterans and their families.

“We are still in the early stages of a transformation of the area, but Hunt is committed to nurturing Kalaeloa Town until it is a thriving, new community for local families.”

Colón noted, too, that the development of Kalaeloa is now at a “critical juncture.”

“We greatly look forward to long-awaited federal and state funding that has been committed to upgrade the area’s electrical infrastructure; only with that significant government investment will growth continue.”