OliverMcMillan to submit EA for Waikiki rental project later this month
https://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/...ki-rental.html
OliverMcMillan Inc. expects to submit a draft environmental assessment later this month for what will be the first new high-rise apartment project in decades, a 500-unit market-rate and affordable mixed-use rental project in the center of Waikiki on 2.5 acres of land owned by the Queen Emma Land Co.
The developer presented its plans for the project, with a working name of OM Kuhio, to the Waikiki Neighborhood Board Tuesday night. OliverMcMillan is seeking planned development-apartment for the project, which must be approved by the Honolulu City Council, and a Waikiki Special District permit before construction can start. The start of the project is being targeted for the summer of 2019, which is also around the time the developer's 65-year lease with Queen Emma Land Co. would commence. The building would open to tenants in 2021.
OliverMcMillan said that 20 percent of the approximate 500 units will be affordable for families earning 80 percent of the area median income for 15 years. The whole project is being geared toward local residents, especially people who currently work in Waikiki in the hospitality, restaurant, retail and entertainment industries, said Kris Hui, OliverMcMillan’s Honolulu-based director of development.
The project involves building a new 27-story, 285-foot tower on 1.6 acres bounded by Walina Street, Kuhio Avenue and Kanekapolei Street — which is currently a Food Pantry store on one corner and a vacant lot that was formerly the Makitti Hawaii restaurant and the Perry’s Smorgy restaurant before that *— that will have some 400 market-rate studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments and 46 affordable studio units, with sizes ranging from 350 square feet to 1,200 square feet.
Solomon Cordwell Buenz is the design architect and Honolulu-based Benjamin Woo Architects is the project architect for the new building, which is being designed with a glass facade on the mauka and makai ends, and lanais are being planned for every unit.
The tower is planned to have a mauka-makai orientation, which means the long side will run along Kanekapolei Street, atop an 85-foot podium that will include two floors of retail facing Kuhio Avenue, parking and an amenity deck with a pool. While parking will be accessed from Walina Street, the Kanekapolei side of the building will have a lobby, porte cochère and drop-off area for tenants who use ride-sharing services and taxis. A storage area for bicycles and surfboards is planned for a space adjacent to the drop-off area, as well as a leasing office, which will be located off the lobby.
The current plan has space for seven commercial tenants, which will include a grocery store in the 20,000-square-foot second-floor space. OliverMcMillan is in negotiations with a local grocery tenant, but Hui declined to confirm whether it was Foodland Super Market, parent of the current Food Pantry tenant.
The street-level spaces will total about 16,000 square feet with a large lobby and escalator for the second-floor grocery tenant.
The plan also calls for an internal loading area for the grocery store and other retail and restaurant tenants, which will remove trucks and early-morning deliveries from the street, Hui said.
On the Diamond Head side of Kanekapolei Street, 54 units in three aging low-rise apartment complexes will receive a gut renovation and reopen as affordable rentals for tenants earning no more than 80 percent of the area median income, which in 2017 was $58,640 for a single person, $66,960 for a couple, $75,360 for a family of three or $83,680 for a family of four. Affordable rents for a studio would be limited, under the 2017 guidelines, to $1,466 for a studio, $1,570 for a one-bedroom and $1,884 for a two-bedroom apartment.
Market rent for a one-bedroom apartment, at today’s prices, would be in the range of $2,600 for a one-bedroom unit, according to OliverMcMillan executives in Honolulu.
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