Sugarcane fields in Kapolei are giving way to a new $20 million headquarters for the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL). The dedication ceremony for the new two-story building is planned for March 26th, the same day that the Prince Kuhio official state holiday is celebrated. But officials at DHHL do not expect to officially move into the new headquarters until April 16th, when the expansion-minded agency will begin having a greater presence in Kapolei. “We want to help provide great opportunities to live, play, work and learn in Kapolei,” said Micah Kane, chairman of DHHL. “Kapolei is our flagship community.”
A clear sign of that is the department’s decision to move its office from Honolulu to Kapolei, where it will occupy a 50,000 square-foot office next to the city’s middle school.
The new office park will employ between 60 and 80 workers. Features include space for the office’s financial literacy program designed to help Native Hawaiians become homeowners. Known as the Home Ownership Assistance Program (HOAP), the program helps Native Hawaiians navigate the financial maze of owning a home and provides support and resources to maintain homeownership. The building will also include space for the county government to build a fire station. Construction is expected to start within the next 18 months. In addition, space has been designated for a police presence at the building. The new headquarters comes at a time when the 86-year-old agency is displaying ambitions beyond creating homeownership opportunities for Native Hawaiians.
From leasing 67 acres for a Florida developer to build a mall, which alone can bring in as much as one million square feet of retail and commercial space, to contributing $7 million for the infrastructure improvements needed to build the University of Hawaii’s West Oahu campus, the agency is preparing to become a major player in Kapolei. “This is a great fit for the department’s philosophy of building communities where residents can live, work, play, and learn in the same place,” said Gov. Linda Lingle. “Besides providing economic opportunities for the entire region, this will have an important influence on reducing traffic by keeping jobs in Kapolei. This is good for Native Hawaiians and it will have a positive impact for everyone in the region.” Already, the planned mall is expected to help efforts to improve Kapolei’s roads by making them less difficult to navigate by car.
Officials at DHHL have said the project is a key factor in at least three road projects aimed at improving traffic flow between Kapolei and Ewa Beach. Chief among them is the new North-South Road that will create a third route in and out of the Kapolei region to the H-1 Freeway. The department is contributing an estimated $6.7 million for the construction of water and sewer lines required during the first phase of the project. “This is an important project that allows the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to partner with other state agencies for the benefit of the entire community,” Kane said. “The North-South Road will do more than improve traffic flow in this area. The water, sewer and electrical lines included in the project will also provide residents with more economic opportunities in their own community.”
As for creating affordable-housing opportunities, the department is preparing to build the largest single-family development in its history. The planned development will be called East Kapolei I, where 403 homes will be built on 92 acres. Construction is scheduled to begin in September. This project is expected to complement Kaupe‘a, the single-family development between Kapolei High School and Kapolei Middle School. In fact, the agency is on the verge of achieving a goal it has aggressively pursued since the late 1990s: turning Kapolei into a hub for Hawaiian homes. The actual build out is expected within 10 years, when Kapolei is projected to become home to between 2,500 and 3,000 Native Hawaiian families. That is a dramatic increase from the 156 families the agency started out in Kapolei with in the late 1990s.
At the same time, the agency intends to make good on a goal to reach out to a different demographic. It has targeted about 1,400 non-Hawaiian families for homes in a 2,400-unit subdivision planed for Kapolei, one of 18 regions where the agency has established a presence in the state.
