Shopkeepers looking for new home
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
The rusted, red letters of the Moanalua Shopping Center sag with age and can no longer attract crowds of shoppers as in the old days.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
Their main purpose now seems to serve as a home to birds that have set up nests inside the crooks of the letters.
Pete Lederer, owner of the Caddie-Shack Hawaii golf shop at Moanalua Shopping Center, has until the end of August to move out and make way for a developer to "privatize" and rebuild the 15-acre center for the Navy.
Rutted walkways and pitted parking lots bear testament to the thousands of people — nearly an even mix of military and civilians — who have strolled through the outdoor shopping center since it opened 50 years ago on Aug. 19, 1954.
These are the final days of the old Moanalua Shopping Center.
"You can say it's tired-looking," said longtime shopper Al Snay, 71, who has seen his dentist and other favorite businesses move out over the past few months. "Run-down would be a better word."
The shopping center sits on Navy property one mile mauka of Pearl Harbor's Nimitz Gate, but is also open to nonmilitary shoppers.
Just a few football fields away, hundreds of cars pack the lot of the shiny Navy Exchange, which opened two years ago. It's difficult to find references to the Navy Exchange that don't include the phrase "World's Largest."
Every day, a steady line of cars comes down Valkenburgh Street and zips past Moanalua Shopping Center to get to the Navy Exchange, even though civilian spending is restricted to specific areas of the exchange.
There are no such restrictions at Moanalua Shopping Center.
Civilians can spend as they please. But these days, the center looks all but shuttered at times.
The last of 35 or so tenants have until the end of August to move out and make way for new plans for a developer to "privatize" and rebuild the 15-acre center for the Navy and manage it for up to 40 years.
The Navy wants the plans to include space for several Navy services but will allow the new developer to decide what, if any, retail operations will lease the new space.
None of the details will be known until the Navy and The McNaughton Group, which the Navy tentatively selected to redevelop the property, finish their negotiations sometime in August.
But the remaining businesses don't think there will be room for them.
Many of them have been insulated from O'ahu's rising rental costs for retail space. So the prospect of moving after all of these years has forced some of the business owners to confront the realities of starting over.
Karen and Pete Lederer have been running the Caddie-Shack Hawaii golf shop at Moanalua Shopping Center for so long that they can't even agree when they opened. Pete maintains they've been in business 17 years; Karen insists that they opened in 1989.
Both can agree that they aren't likely to find another spot like the one they have now — where the rent on their 1,500-square-foot space has never gone up.
Pete has looked at a couple of new spaces in the 'Aiea/ Pearl City area, but the rents were at least one-third higher. And Pete knows that leaving Moanalua Shopping Center will cost him his dependable military business.
The Lederers are among the business owners who plan to hang on until the end before deciding whether to reopen elsewhere.
"I'm not going to move into a place where I have to work just to pay the rent," Pete said. "That doesn't make sense."
Ryan Furukawa has seen rental prices as much as 50 percent above what he's paying now for his Mike's Engraving & Trophies business. He also worries about keeping his military customers, who make up 70 percent of the business. If the worst happens — if he ends up paying more for rent while losing his core business — he insists he'll find a way to survive.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
"Just gotta work harder," he said.
Moanalua Shopping Center tenants who must move out will face the harsh realities of O'ahu rental costs.
Moving to a new location should be easier on the handful of Mainland-based fast-food restaurants that ring the main retail area, said Doug Smoyer, chairman of the board of Retail Strategies, a retail and real-estate consulting firm. But it could be traumatic for the mom-and-pop businesses that might struggle to keep their customers.
"It's always a risk to move," Smoyer said. "There are going to be some folks who are going to have to rethink their businesses."
It's those kind of decisions that leave Remy Badua paralyzed over what to do when the mall closes to make way for something newer.
Badua has run Jesse's Bakery & Restaurant in Moanalua Shopping Center for 30 years and celebrated her anniversary back in February.
But the celebration's clearly over. Between now and the end of August, Badua — and a handful of other remaining businesses — must figure out whether to move to a strange place or close up for good.
"We don't know yet what we'll do," Badua said. "We really don't know."
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.
