Posted on: Sunday, September 21, 2003

Chronology of a retail giant in the Islands

Advertiser Staff

May 1992: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announces plans to open a Sam's Club, a members-only store, in Pearl Highlands Center in Pearl City. The big-box retailer plans a 1993 fall opening.

April 1993: The pending July 12 opening of Sam's Club brings more than 2,000 Hawai'i residents to apply for the 225 job openings.

May 1993: Wal-Mart signs agreement to open its first Hawai'i Wal-Mart discount center at the Town Center of Mililani. The store is scheduled to open in early 1994.

June 1993: Wal-Mart announces plans for its second Sam's Club in Hawai'i. The new store in Kahului, Maui, will cover more than three acres next to the new Kahului Kmart.

July 1993: Sam's Club in the Pearl Highlands Center opens.

April 1994: Wal-Mart gets permits from Maui Planning Commission and agrees, along with landowner Alexander & Baldwin, to make road improvements before construction of Sam's Club begins.

August 1994: Wal-Mart pulls out of Kahului, saying a review of future market conditions led the company to change its plans. Alexander & Baldwin announces the 13-acre parcel will be occupied by Costco.

December 1994: Wal-Mart announces plans to open an outlet on Hawaiian Home Lands in Hilo. The new store will anchor the Waiakea Center and is the second planned for the Big Island. Opening is set for mid-1996.

August 1995: Wal-Mart's Kona store opens in the new Crossroads Center.

January 1996: Three Hawaiian activists arrested when protesting the building of the Waiakea Center on Hawaiian Home Lands.

January 1996: Twelve more arrested as protesters continue to camp just outside of the 20-acre project. Circuit Judge Riki May Amano amends restraining order to say protesters cannot block the project anywhere.

December 1996: Wal-Mart publicly announces it will open the Hilo outlet for the 1995 Christmas season, but almost a year later the store is still not open. The chain hopes for a low-key opening in late December, with a grand opening to follow on Jan. 27.

January 2000: Wal-Mart signs a contract to buy an 8.5-acre vacant property on Ke'eaumoku Street, a plan that will put them in urban Honolulu as early as the middle of next year.

April 2000: More than 100 union workers loudly protest the proposed Wal-Mart store on Ke'eaumoku Street.

August 2000: A Wal-Mart and a Sam's Club could be built on the Ke'eaumoku Street "superblock," according to a local broker. The company now expects to finish plans by the end of the year.

August 2000: Costco plans an Iwilei store to bring it closer to the Island's population center.

August 2000: Wal-Mart shares its version of the 300,000-square-foot project with the Ala Moana-Kaka'ako Neighborhood Board. Construction tentatively would begin next spring and stores would open in the spring or summer of 2002. About 850 would be employed.

December 2000: Wal-Mart again plans to build a Maui store. The 141,892-square-foot store will be built in Kahului in the Maui Business Park and is set to open the following fall.

April 2001: Wal-Mart is reassessing plans to build double-decker Wal-Mart/Sam's Club stores on Ke'eaumoku Street after the company let a contract to purchase a development site expire.

May 2001: A month after Wal-Mart backed out of a deal to buy the Ke'eaumoku "superblock," Home Depot signs a purchase agreement for the 8.5-acre Honolulu site.

May 2001: The tentative deal by Home Depot to buy the Ke'eaumoku "superblock" falls through.

September 2001: Kmart announces plans for a Super Kmart Center on the Ke'eaumoku "superblock."

February 2002: Wal-Mart says it is considering a store on a piece of city property in Pearl City. The company has not yet agreed to a purchase price for the 20-acre parcel where Wal-Mart already operates a Sam's Club store.

March 2002: Kmart, trying to reorganize under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, pulls out of its deal to buy the Ke'eaumoku "superblock."

May 2002: Wal-Mart signs another agreement to buy the Ke'eaumoku "superblock" for development of a double-decker Wal-Mart and Sam's Club.

May 2002: Wal-Mart concludes its deal to buy the Ke'eaumoku "superblock" paying an estimated $35 million for the site. The company wants to finish construction by early 2004.

October 2002: Wal-Mart agrees to meet with residents from the area mauka of Kapi'olani Boulevard and will present its traffic study and revised plans for the project of their double-decker stores.

October 2002: A group of residents who live near the Ke'eaumoku "superblock" have asked city officials to halt plans for Wal-Mart's double-decker stores until an adequate traffic study has been conducted.

October 2002: City has taken the position that Wal-Mart has the right, under existing "community business mixed-use" zoning, to proceed with construction on the 10-acre site by simply obtaining required building permits.

December 2002: To block the construction of the proposed double-decker Wal-Mart/Sam's Club, Citizens Against Reckless Development, the United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 480 and Honolulu resident Jim Becker filed a lawsuit in Circuit Court claiming the city should have not allowed Wal-Mart to proceed without a full environmental impact statement.

January 2003: Twenty-five sets of human remains that may be from the 1850s Honolulu smallpox epidemic are discovered at the Wal-Mart construction site on Ke'eamouku. The area was quickly closed, but work continues in other areas.

February 2003: Wal-Mart is close to finalizing an agreement with the city to build its Pearl City store. Some residents are incensed because the big-box retailer will not be required to pay for traffic improvements.

February 2003: Circuit Judge Gary Chang dismisses all but one complaint by a citizens group asking for a halt to the Wal-Mart store on Ke'eamouku Street. Jim Becker, spokesman for the citizens group, said state and county laws require that before a court can decide the case the group first must ask the director of the city Department of Planning and Permitting to issue an order stopping work until an environmental assessment is done.

March 2003: A state judge rules that Citizens Against Reckless Development and the United Food and Workers Union Local 480 do not have legal standing to ask the court to halt construction of Wal-Mart/Sam's Club. But two members of those groups who live near the construction site can go to trial as individuals.

May 2003: Wal-Mart was issued a city building permit and can continue building its Ke'eamouku store. The store is expected to open late next spring or early summer pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by Citizens Against Reckless Development set for Sept. 5.

May 2003: The remains of 25 bodies discovered at the Wal-Mart Ke'eamouku construction site are being treated with "great disrespect," according to the Hawaiian group Hui Malama who visited the site. Peter Young, chairman of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, asks Wal-Mart to put up a buffer fence around the site, clean up the area and find a better way to protect the open grave.

May 2003: A lawsuit is filed by Native Hawaiian Legal Corp. accusing Wal-Mart and officials from the Department of Land and Natural Resources of violating the public trust and unlawfully manipulating and violating sections of state law that deal with protection and preservation of human remains and desecration of graves.

May 2003: Two more sets of human remains are found on the Wal-Mart construction site, a day after a lawsuit was filed by a Hawaiian group over the handling of 25 other iwi kupuna, or ancestral bones. The group claims that the lawsuit was not filed to stop the Wal-Mart development, but to force the state to leave the remains where they are and focus attention on the state's practice of allowing developers to skip archaeological surveys that are required by historic preservation laws.

June 2003: A Circuit judge dismisses a claim by community activist Jim Becker that the ongoing construction at the Wal-Mart/Sam's Club site near Ala Moana Center created a personal nuisance for him. The only remaining claim in the lawsuit the group filed in December is Doris Nakamura's argument that construction poses a personal nuisance and that if the project is completed, traffic congestion and air pollution will exacerbate the problem.

July 2003: Wal-Mart has agreed to pay its share of the traffic improvements at its Pearl City site, which could total $1.5 million.

August 2003: A state cultural specialist in the State Historic Preservation Division's Burial Sites Program recommends that officials order construction halted in at least part of the Wal-Mart construction site on Ke'eaumoku because more human remains are likely to be found.