EJP is assisting the Hawaii Public Housing Authority in its efforts to rebuild it’s headquarters property as a mixed-use development with approximately 800 senior affordable residential units and new central offices for HPHA.
Janis L. Magin Real Estate Editor Pacific Business News
The Hawaii Public Housing Authority said a master plan to redevelop its administrative campus in Honolulu would include 800 affordable senior rentals, up to 10,000 square feet of retail and commercial spaces at street level near the corner of School Street and Lanakila Avenue, as well as new office space for the state agency, The Hawaii Public Housing Authority is planning to build 800 units of affordable senior rentals as part of a $370 million mixed-use development on the six-acre site of its current administrative campus in Honolulu under a public-private partnership with Retirement Housing Foundation.
HPHA said the master plan also calls for up to 10,000 square feet of retail and commercial spaces at street level near the corner of School Street and Lanakila Avenue, as well as new office space for the state agency, according to a draft environmental impact statement published by the state Office of Environmental Quality Control this week. The agency had previously signed a master development agreement with California-based Retirement Housing Foundation.
The plan proposes up to three apartment buildings of 15 to 16 stories that would range from 144 feet to 153 feet in height, with lower and mid-rise buildings along the street, which would wrap around a parking structure. Construction would be done in four phases, with each phased taking approximately two years, for a total of eight years.
The units would be rented to seniors making between 30 percent and 60 percent of area median income, or between $21,990 and $43,980 for a single person. HPHA had originally considered building a mix of 1,000 family and senior rentals at the site in the EIS preparation notice published in August, but settled on 800 senior units after holding community meetings during the fall.
Hakim Ouansafi, the agency’s executive director, previously told PBN that there are some 5,000 seniors on a waiting list for public housing.
The project would be the first affordable housing project undertaken by the HPHA, which administers thousand of public housing units across the state, as well as the federal Section 8 housing voucher program in Hawaii.
Ouansafi has said the agency also aims to redevelop 10 public housing projects, starting with Mayor Wright Homes near Downtown Honolulu, into mixed-use rental projects with as many as 11,000 new units.