The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands and the city of Honolulu are planning a land swap worth an estimated $30 million that will provide the city with a site for a rail maintenance facility in Waipahu.
In exchange for the land, the city of Honolulu will provide two parcels to Hawaiian Home Lands that total about 52 acres near the Varona Village plantation community in East Kapolei.
One of the two parcels included in the Varona property adjoins the site of the planned Ka Makana Ali‘i commercial complex. The land exchange will allow the department to develop new housing and possibly commercial space to compliment the department’s continuing developments in Kapolei, said Alapaki Nahale-a, chairman of the Hawaiian Homes Commission.
The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation has already awarded a $195 million construction contract to build the rail maintenance facility on the 56-acre Hawaiian Homes property in Waipahu that the city plans to acquire.
Around 12 acres of the Waipahu property is now the site of an H-1 onramp, and will not be included in city plans for the rail facility, as the onramp will remain where it is. An appraisal of the properties done in 2009 tentatively valued them at about $15 million each, according to Hawaiian Homes records.
Nahale-a said the Varona site is next to existing Hawaiian Homes property in Kapolei, including residential and commercial properties.
“It is appropriate for residential development, and it may also have some commercial value, so we believe the Varona Village site is just better for what we do,” Nahale-a said.
This is an important step forward for the rail, and it looks as though this trade will benefit both parties involved. It gives the city its preferred place to build the rail maintenance facility, and it gives Hawaiian Home Lands to huge pieces of property to develop on.
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