 Good afternoon, Howard Wigg, Code Green, Sink Tech, Hawaii. Welcome one and all. Adaptive reuse, what in the world is adaptive reuse? In this case, it refers to buildings that have expired their original intent. And very often they're just sitting abandoned and neglected. And instead of tearing that building down and building a new one, why not breathe new life into that old building? That's what our guest of the day is all about. But what am I, a white energy person doing, talking about adaptive reuse? Well, think about it, when you build a building, you had to mine all that steel, glass, cement, and then more energy to erect the building, tremendous amounts of energy. And then if you tear it down, there's more energy, you dispose of the rubble, there's more energy, and then you build a new building, that's even more energy. Why not practice adaptive reuse? Where you ask, what good use would this building be now in this neighborhood? And you adjust accordingly and make it into a commercial, commercially viable, brand spanking new use with brand spanking new equipment in it. So Linda Mickey, principal of G71 of the largest architectural firms in all of Honolulu is a specialty specialist in this field. And she thinks not just of adaptive reuse, but of redemption. The building has committed the sin of getting old and useless, and she redeems it to an entirely new life. So welcome, Linda Mickey. So glad to have you on board. Thank you, Howard. I love the way you describe redemptive. So you have four projects to describe and each one of them is entirely a different ballgame. This is gonna be so fascinating. And we've got a lot of material to cover. So why don't you get into Kupu at first, Linda? Take it away. Okay, terrific. So if we can show the first slide, I wanted to share a few projects that really show the breadth of adaptive reuse. And so the first slide is looking at Kupu and it was originally designed as a net and canoe shed. And unfortunately over time, it got used into basically a miscellaneous storage unit. And what Kupu did is they had a vision and they wanted to create a community center and a training center for some of their students. And so really what we're talking about is how do you open your eyes to see things so that you can actually have visions of how we can reuse buildings versus tearing them down and building new ones. Because I really think that that is going to be the way that we're going to be a sustainable community. Where is Kupu? Where is this building located? It's near Alamoana on the basin. So it has beautiful, I mean, it's near the ocean. So it has beautiful ocean sunsets. It's just a great community place. We've had our office Christmas parties there and the students there cook fabulous food. I mean, so it all around, they have a great program. It's a great venue and it's an open-air place to really bring community in. And we love just the mission that they have and the vision they have, but also that it's taking something that was really unused and bringing life back to it. And that's the exciting thing about adaptive reuse. It's taking something and bringing new life by bringing people to it. Maybe you could show this slide again and point to what examples of what's going on in there. Well, a couple of the, you know, the little sketch is just showing how it was a net shed. It became a storage. And then now it's a community center with sort of a kind of open-air plaza. And that's just a couple of pictures of before and after and really at their opening. And it has an artwork done by Kaili Chan, one of our in-house artists. And it's a beautiful place to be. It's naturally ventilated and it's a great venue. And it's a small project, but that's why I'm trying to share that, you know, if you go to the next slide, you can have adaptive reuse in all kinds of sizes, the projects. For example, this picture is actually of our new office. We've moved in a couple of years ago and it used to be the old Bank of Hawaii main branch. And they had a huge branch that took up the whole first floor. And this space actually wasn't even on the, it wasn't even available for leasing. But one of my partners and I were in, we had just toured some office space and it was kind of in the tower. And we went into the main branch and there's this beautiful two-story, two-story spaces. There wasn't a connection to the mezzanine at the time. And we were just kind of ideating and I was telling her, you know, I really would love to have the office in this space. So we came up with a crazy proposal. We presented it to Peter Ho and he liked it. And he made it happen because really it was taking into account the new way people are banking. So they don't need as many teller spaces. It's really like kind of bringing it up to the current, you know, electronic means of how a lot of people do their banking. And so it worked out perfectly timing-wise because they actually used the half of the branch bank that our office is in, while they renovated the other half of the building for their new branch. And then the last thing they did is they had a filming of Hawaii Five Bowl as the bank of Oahu. And that was the last use of that sort of bank branch on that side. But, you know, there's a lot of things that we reused in the bank that people don't really notice either. You know, one of the things is they had these beautiful four by four ceiling tiles and they were fabulous. And you can't find that type of ceiling tiles any longer. And they were original. And so we reuse them, which was great. And they had another beautiful, really large filing storage. And so the contractor figured out how to almost like Flintstone, Egyptian roller on rollers to roll this large cabinet to our storage area. So we actually reused a lot of things that were beautiful and still viable. But, you know, one of the new things we added was a big stair going up to the mezzanine. And at first the mezzanine looked very low. So they had kind of long, long low lights. And by removing them and changing the light fixtures to the new upgraded light fixtures, it really kind of opened the space. And we actually opened the ceiling. So we have a part of our second floor ceiling that's open to the mechanical ducting. And it just really feels a lot more open and inviting. And so it's really just trying to take the time to look at things a little differently on how we can reuse, which is very sustainable. You're saving a heck of a lot of energy along the way, Linda. The way you stayed in the office and the governor, thanks you so much for that. You're welcome. So the next project I wanted to share was the Aloha Tower Marketplace. Could we show that? So HPU, Hawaii Pacific University had this great vision in their master plan to have an anchor to their downtown campus. And the Aloha Tower Marketplace had been in, you know, somewhat low occupancy, especially on the second floor. Second floor retail is very challenging. And so what we partnered with HPU is to create dormitory lofts. So we were able to fit in two-story dormitories on the second floor of the Aloha Tower Marketplace. And the nice thing about it is that we really got a chance to show some really interesting spaces. If you could go to the next slide. So we had some very interesting and unique dorm rooms. So they had living areas. And we even reutilized some of the, they had some roll-up doors. And so if you notice on the right bottom picture, that's an existing, those are all existing storefronts. So we did a really kind of an interesting thing in reutilizing the storefronts by putting in decorative patterning on our window film for privacy and reutilizing some of the really kind of neat storefront areas that we could in order to give it sort of that industrial and also urban feel for the downtown campus. So that was actually a slightly larger project in the downstairs actually had some of the multi-purpose areas for the university. And so that they actually then had a gathering place for them to come together and use. So the next project I wanted to share a little bit more detail about is an old iconic building. You can go to the next slide. And I don't know if you remember this it's the Waikiki Trade Center. It was built in 1980. So it has some very iconic circular windows. So I think in Waikiki, if you're driving by on Kohio, you'll see a old iconic tower that was built with the intent to be offices. So they had offices, they had parking and they had retail. And one of the interesting things about this project was it was a really good adaptive reuse for basically the needs because there weren't enough at that time in 2014. There really weren't enough hotel rooms. And so this was also to me the need. But the other thing is that offices in Waikiki were not in high demand. So the building itself had come into some disrepair because it was pretty much almost 50% vacant. So highly underutilized building. So I'll go into a little bit more details about how we went about doing this. But one of the first things we did you can go to the next slide is we actually tried to make the hotel have its own identity and entrance off of seaside where the existing port kosher was. So the hotel was not necessarily related to the retail space that we modified. One of the most important things for a hotel use was to check on the ventilation because it's a change in use from office to hotel. There are several requirements that change ventilation. We had to make sure that we could still reuse the existing curtain wall and that we also were able to get enough of the sewer connection for the added bathrooms and water needed for the restaurant and other areas. So you can go to the next slide, please. This is one of the areas that are while it was under construction. And so remember I was telling you about kind of having new eyes to think about things and to see how we could really transform the space. So they had a really large roof deck. And so we had envisioned actually creating a kind of like a semi-sky lobby. So you'd go up to the eighth floor and you would enter into an expanse of lobby and bar and it would open up to the pool deck which we put on the existing roof that was underutilized. You can go to the next slide. So this is a picture of the new lobby and it really was a transformation because we took a portion of the existing window glazing and we actually put in open doors so that it flowed out and opened into the new pool area. So if you go to the next slide, you can see sort of the unusual configuration of the tower itself as well. So I think we had, I don't know, something like 20 something different unit types because of the unusual configuration of the building. We had to be creative on how we got guest rooms in there. And so because of the deep space, we ended up getting some very gracious, large guest rooms on areas where maybe the view wasn't as nice but you had a really large kind of a guest room for them to enjoy. So part of the challenges that occurred as well, you can go to the next slide, is when we were looking at the existing pool deck, one structurally we had to figure out how we were gonna reinforce the structure to be able to carry the pool water. Also there was another wind factor involved. And really if you look at it before, it was really a very large underutilized space and we didn't even use the whole roof. We only used a portion of it that was sort of protected by the tower from the wind. And so it was a very fun project in trying to create a really nice environment and space for people to come and have a little oasis for them to enjoy when they came back from their days ventures. You can go to the next slide. So these are just some examples of the different types of guest rooms. And one of the beautiful things about this adaptive reuse is that the office building already had fabulous views of the ocean. You could see the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, the ocean beyond. And we really enjoyed sort of celebrating the circular windows because there's something special about looking through any view through a circular window. I don't know what it is Howard, but it just makes it feel special. It like frames it and it makes it feel very special. So we had a lot of fun with that as well. Go to the next slide. So this shows you some of the rooms and some of the very kind of interesting circular windows that we had as well there. So on the ground floor, that is where we had some very interesting retail adventures. And so the next slide shows the before and after. On the top, you'll see the floor plan before. And it had a very large atrium that ran through the retail space. So in a way you had retail that was internal to the atrium area. Now at the time when it was built, it was very classic 1980s. It had sort of metallic finishes on the round columns. And they had a lot of nightclubs and discos during that time. And so unfortunately the metal on the columns and the cladding took its toll. And there were a lot of fist images and people who had punched it. So it was quite beaten up by the youth. And I think this transformation for the community was that it changed the environment. And this was happening all along Kuhio Avenue. It was like, this was the time when there was a real revitalization going on on Kuhio Avenue with international marketplace, just the whole street. And I believe it really changed the environment and the community. And people then were able to come out and enjoy things with their family. So if we could go back to that slide, what we had looked at doing was to separate the hotel entrance, which is that little orange small piece, and the retail along Kuhio to really help to celebrate what was going on. This also had a large second floor tenant. And so Charter's Larching and Coleswood Capital Group, they really did a great job on really looking for tenants that were fabulous tenants. And so they basically leased out pretty much all of their tenant space. So the interesting thing is that Nordstrom Rack, which is there, and they take up the whole second floor, they had an interesting concept because we needed to provide a two-story entry to get up to Nordstrom Rack and to create a facade that would sort of open up and give that feel of that two-story space. So one of the things that was also, you can go to the next slide. So one of the things that we had to do was if you look at the upper left-hand picture, it shows part of the demolition of some of the large concrete beams. And they had three large circles that ran across the front facade. And that is actually the structure behind the Nordstrom facade that you see currently. And Nordstrom had actually opened before the hotel. So part of the other strategic planning we had to do was to actually run all of the plumbing lines, everything that would go through the tenant space. We had to have that actually planned and installed before the tenant took over the space. So there was a lot of logistics and it was actually quite a challenge to keep the project going as well as they kept all of the parking available and open during construction. So during the year and a half of construction, everyone still was able to access the parking garage because I guess parking is very valuable in Waikiki. So they ended up keeping it open and available for everyone to use. And so what we ended up doing is to really get the best out of this property. We cleaned up the front facade and there were several reasons for doing that. One is when you're doing a renovation, it's really important to upgrade to what's needed. And so if you go back to the slide that we were looking at earlier, so one of the pictures in the middle is actually showing the floor infill. And our structural engineers had to be very savvy on how they figured out how to do this because one of the really important things that the intent was we were trying to minimize any new foundation or footings. Because in Waikiki, there's a lot of archeological survey and inventory that we have to do. And so even digging for the elevator hit was something that we had to take care of very early on with the cultural surveys to make sure that we didn't find anything, even though it was previously disturbed, there was nothing that was found and even when we planted the coconut trees outside. So we were very careful on how we did the infill of the atrium and we were able to actually offset some of the retail space with the unused floor area underneath the new pool. And so we really took actually square footage that was underutilized under the pool and moved it to the retail space so that they could really maximize the retail square footage that they had on Cajillo Avenue. So in that other photo, one of the other things I wanted to show was that we actually had hidden in the corners in front of the Nordstrom building, little corner, let me see, one of the lower left corner picture, it shows one of the corners of the stone and it's actually to receive a special type of flood barrier gate. And so we actually had installed in all of the entries flood barriers so that you would have these flood barriers that they could put in front of the doors and flood barriers almost work opposite from fire exiting. So in fire exiting, you want people to be able to run out of the building quickly, but when you put up flood barriers, they want to keep the building protected from the floodwaters from getting in. So the elevation is carefully designed so that the doors can still open, but should there be a flood, you can keep the floodwaters out. And it comes up to maybe almost three feet high on the flood barriers. And so it's just really interesting because there's a lot of interesting challenges that you also have to do when you do an adaptive reuse in bringing up the building to current code and systems. Okay, next slide. We've got about two minutes Linda. Okay, thank you. So that's just the facade with the hidden flood barriers that hopefully we'll never have to see. And the last thing in enclosing the last slide is really a lot of adaptive reuse is how we rethink about things and bringing people back into the space and bringing life to the new buildings that we already have. So it's like bringing new life into every building. So I hope everyone will keep their eyes open for some creative thoughts and ideas. Wow, thank you so much Linda. If you notice, I didn't butt in at any time because you're such a great storyteller. You just really, you flow so smoothly there. And just to me from what I saw the best example of adaptive reuse is the Aloha Tower space. I used to go up to that second bottom floor. Aside from, there was the brewery there that was active but everything else was pretty well dead. And then the heart of downtown, that's almost a sin. Now you've got all these colleges living there and all that space, the meeting space on the ground floor. Well, and then they still have the restaurants, which was great. I mean, that was the other thing is renovated around the restaurants that were already in place. And so a lot of the restaurants remained. And Aloha Tower also has some of the boats and other things that, so they still remain and in pretty much for most of these renovations, you have tenants who are there, you need to schedule and plan around. But really in the end, as I was telling you, sometimes it's very hairy when we're walking through and when my shoes get stuck to the floor, it kind of grosses you out. But when you see the transformation in the end and people enjoying the space, that's really what it's all about. And yeah, and the concept of underutilized space in the heart of Waikiki, what a contradiction and can you imagine the value of a square foot in there? And here you go revitalizing it, bringing the people back in. Wow, I am so impressed and that we have run out of time. So I thank you very, very, very much. And come back again when you have, I don't think any new projects can be this exciting but I know you're working on new things. Oh, thank you Howard for having me appreciate it. This has been a whole lot of fun and bidding fun farewell. This is Howard Wiig, Cold Green, Sink Tech, Hawaii. See you next time and bless you for your work Linda. Oh.