Posted on: Monday, August 9, 2004

EDITORIAL
Development muscle steps up in Kaka'ako

With a few caveats, it's a good sign that the companies negotiating to develop Kaka'ako's prime waterfront areas are thinking big.

Kajima Urban Development, along with retail development giant General Growth Properties, wants to combine residential units, retail and entertainment space, parking and possibly even a hotel with the aquarium it has proposed for state lands at the edge of Kewalo Basin and Point Panic.

It's up to the Hawaii Community Development Authority to decide whether this impressive hui should become master developer of these prime makai lands.

On the positive side, we're impressed with the abilities of Kajima and especially General Growth Properties, owner of Ala Moana Center and Victoria Ward Centers, and we believe that master planning is essential.

That said, the HCDA must negotiate from the standpoint that these lands are the last of their sort, our "crown jewel"; they must be developed suitably, in concert with such neighbor properties as the new medical school and the planned Victoria Ward expansion.

Our abiding hope is that Kaka'ako, as it reaches maturity, will become the site of a globally known signature development — if not actually on these makai lands, then at least visible from this shoreline.

After all, master planning means that the whole of future Kaka'ako will be far more than the mere sum of its parts.