Marukai plans 99 Cents store in Waipahu
By Scott Ishikawa
Advertiser Central O'ahu Writer
WAIPAHU — Marukai Corp. plans to open a 20,000-square-foot 99 Cents store at the Waipahu Town Center next month.
Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser
The move will create 50 to 70 full- and part-time jobs and is another encouraging sign that business is on the rise in Waipahu after the recession of the 1990s, which saw the closing of the Waipahu Sugar Mill and Arakawa's general store.
The opening of a 99 Cents store at the Waipahu Town Center next month is good news for the mall, which lost Safeway, its anchor tenant, in 2000. The store, which plans to carry thousands of items, is hiring 50 to 70 employees.
It's also good news for the Waipahu shopping center at 94-050 Farrington Highway, which lost its anchor tenant, Safeway, in late 2000.
The Waipahu 99 Cents store, which will offer a variety of local and Japanese food and merchandise, will be nearly three times as big as the 7,000-square-foot store at Ward Farmers Market, but similar in selection.
"Right now our goal is to open Memorial Day weekend," said Roy Ishihara, who manages the Marukai Ward store and is helping to put together the Waipahu outlet. "Our Ward store has been successful and caters to the town area, so we're looking at branching out into Central/Leeward."
Marukai signed an agreement last month to sublease the site from Footlocker at the Waipahu Town Center. Footlocker had taken over the lease from Woolworth's when the chain shut down in 1997.
Marukai already has begun hiring employees for the new store, according to Ishihara.
Unlike the Marukai wholesale stores, no annual membership fee is required to shop the 99 Cent stores, Ishihara said.
Marukai opened in 1965 as a wholesale distributor run by Richard and Hidejiro Matsu, sons of the founder of Marukai Trading in Japan. It sold Oriental goods to local retail merchants.
Faced with declining business as prices for goods imported from Japan soared with the rising yen, Marukai phased out its wholesale operations and opened Marukai Wholesale Mart on Dillingham Boulevard in 1987, and the Ward store in 1998.
Ishihara said the Waipahu store plans to carry as many as 10,000 different items, including plastic containers, kitchenware, housewares, stationery and craft supplies.
"Along with mainly snack items, we're looking at a more diverse mix of food items, with perishables such as produce and fish items," he said. "Even though we sell ourselves as a 99 Cents store, customers coming are going to be surprised at the quality of our products."
Christine Camp, managing director at Avalon Development & Consulting, who was hired to help court lessees to the Waipahu Town Center, believes Marukai will be a regional draw, attracting customers to the center who are shopping for more than basic neighborhood needs such as groceries and drugstore goods.
Camp said her company is negotiating for a possible sit-down restaurant and computer store at the center.
Safeway officials said last year they were still looking for a suitable replacement tenant for the vacated 41,000-square-foot site. The shopping center is owned by Gabrielsen & Co., based in California.
Other parts of Waipahu have seen a resurgence in business with the development of the Mill Town Center business park at the site of the former Waipahu Sugar Mill.
Nine companies have moved or plan to move there, including FujiFilm, with 75 local employees.
A church has purchased the old Arakawa's building along Waipahu Depot Road for $1.5 million and a community group wants to convert the Bigway supermarket into a festival marketplace for food and craft vendors. The Filipino Community Center also plans to open June 11.
