Nine residential high-rise buildings — including five along Ala Moana opposite Kewalo harbor — could be part of a 20-year master plan to redevelop 60 acres at Ward Centers.

Ward Centers owner General Growth Properties envisions dotting its Kaka'ako land with as many as 4,300 residential units spread among 20 buildings, with some as high as 400 feet and many clad with retail, restaurants and entertainment businesses at lower levels.

The developer yesterday presented these new details of its conceptual master plan at a meeting of the Hawai'i Community Development Authority, the state agency governing development in Kaka'ako.

General Growth is asking the agency to approve its broad framework for redevelopment that would establish density, height limits and other parameters for the long-term project.

General Growth in February unveiled a rough idea of how it would like to remake Ward Centers into "Ward Neighborhood" with roughly 4,000 housing units and commercial space without specifics as to how it might distribute the housing over property that today includes Ward Warehouse, Ward Centre and Ward Entertainment Center.

Under the plan, General Growth over 20 or more years expects to replace everything that exists today on its property roughly bounded by Ala Moana, Queen Street, a cluster of blocks just 'ewa of Ward Avenue and the IBM Building, except for a Whole Foods Market under construction now.

For General Growth to build residential towers up to 400 feet along Ala Moana, the development plan would have to be approved under current HCDA rules that produced adjacent 400-foot condominiums Hokua and Nauru Tower on Ala Moana.

Those rules, however, are undergoing an amendment process that is considering lowering building heights along Ala Moana to 200 feet.

That change has only been suggested, and would ultimately be up to approval by HCDA board members. But the reduced building height has garnered some community support at public presentations of draft rules over the last two years.

Michelle Matson, a local resident who's been involved in community planning efforts in Kaka'ako, said she favors the reduced height limit over what she calls a "soldier-like pattern" of towers in General Growth's Ward plan.

Matson believes that General Growth, which doesn't anticipate any residential construction until after 2011, should tailor its master plan to proposed rules that may be in effect at the time development is envisioned.

A resolution in the state Senate introduced last month by Sen. Carol Fukunaga D-11th (Makiki, Pawa'a) and six other senators asks HCDA to either delay action on General Growth's development application or require the company follow the draft rules.

But Anthony Ching, HCDA executive director, said the agency has an obligation to process a master plan application expeditiously under rules in effect.

Ching said the agency is about to issue a draft environmental impact statement on proposed rule changes and likely wouldn't be ready to adopt amended rules until sometime next year following public hearings.

He said overall height limits, building densities and other design considerations aren't expected to be radically revised. "I don't think there's that much variance in the proposed and existing rules," he said. "It's not like there is an earth-shaking difference between the rules. They will be somewhat consistent."

TALLER BUILDING BASES

General Growth would not lose or gain any density for its overall plan under current or proposed rules. The company actually favors certain proposed rule changes, such as allowing the base of towers to rise 65 feet or 75 feet instead of the presently allowed 45 feet, and is seeking a variance that would be in line with draft rules.

Jan Yokota, General Growth's local vice president of development and a former HCDA executive director, said taller building bases would allow the developer to wrap the bases with retail, restaurants and other commercial uses that encourage pedestrian activity.

The idea is a smart-growth principal of urban design supported generally by HCDA. Essentially, the variance would allow General Growth to concentrate more uses into individual buildings instead of developing more buildings with the same amount of commercial and residential space.

Ching said taller building bases is something a developer can request if no rule changes were being considered, so it's not like General Growth is asking that its master plan be approved under a combination of existing and proposed rules.

Another variance sought by General Growth is to position buildings along Ala Moana closer to the road, which Yokota said would allow the developer to orient most high-rises with their narrow sides facing mauka and makai.

Yokota emphasized that no buildings have been designed, and that the number, size and location of buildings could change. "This is very conceptual," she said.

RESIDENTIAL, RETAIL MIX

Under HCDA density and zoning rules, General Growth has enough Ward land to build about 9 million square feet of building space that can be a mix of residential and commercial use.

Yokota said the mix could be as much as 7 million square feet of residential, or 4,300 units, including 860 units for rent or sale at moderate prices under HCDA rules.

But depending on market demands over the next two decades, it's possible that more retail or even office space gets developed that would reduce residential units.

Retail would continue to be a major presence in the neighborhood, with space for about 400 retail tenants, up from about 300 today, according to General Growth.

But Yokota said the focus on housing is an effort to create an urban village where people live, work and play.

"It's to be a neighborhood," she said. "To be a neighborhood you have to have people living there."

Other elements in the plan include providing 9,600 parking spaces for private and public use, tying in to a mass-transit station planned by the city in the vicinity and creating five acres of open space.

General Growth said its envisioned high-density neighborhood will generate ridership for the transit system and help alleviate pressure on developing more rural or agricultural parts of O'ahu with housing.

PEDESTRIAN PLAZAS

Most of the open space will be distributed in three landscaped pedestrian plazas. An initial phase of development is slated to start in 2011 with a main plaza replacing old warehouses and Ward Farmers Market up to Auahi Street, and extended in a future phase to Ala Moana through what is now the middle of Ward Warehouse.

Chicago-based General Growth, which also owns Ala Moana Center, has been contemplating how to proceed with redevelopment of Ward Centers since it bought the collection of mostly retail complexes in 2002 from Honolulu-based Victoria Ward Ltd., which had its own plans for a live-work-play urban village on the site.

Under HCDA rules, the agency has 200 days to act on the developer's master plan application, which will be considered at future public meetings that will include a hearing where citizens may testify.

If the master plan is approved, individual development projects with more details would be subject to a public hearing and approval by HCDA's board.