 Yeah, welcome back to Community Matters. I'm Jay Fidelin. Take that. We're going to re-examine the canyons of Kakaako. Indeed, they are. With somebody who's been thinking about Kakaako for years and years with the AIA and as a, what I want to call it, it is an aesthetically minded architect who has practiced for hundreds of years in this city. Scott Wilson. Hi, Scott. Yes. Greetings from the Pleistocene era. I didn't realize I was quite that old. Greetings, Jay. Greetings. Well, you and I spent plenty of time in AIA meetings about Kakaako. It was an effort of architects in general and trying to weigh in and have a say in what was going on. I remember Neil Abercrombie wanted this huge phallic tower. It was like 38 stories high. It was really extraordinary. And then the big guys came in and they gave us, they gave us images of, of, of, of, of Chinzano tables and streets that, that curved one way or the other and bicycle pass and pedestrian pass and little, you know, European shops. It was going to be like a city in Europe. It looked like. And, and here we are. Must be what five, six, seven years later. And we don't have that. It disappeared like a puff of smoke. And so I would like to look back with you and reexamine the canyons of Kakaako list. Those 40 foot concrete, you know, walls going straight up escarpments is what they are. And figure out with you, you know, what happened and where are we now and where can we be? Is there hope? This is another alternative title. Is there still hope for Kakaako? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Scott, tell us about your thoughts about Kakaako. Yeah. Jay, it is, um, you, you have to remember that Kakaako is a city within the city. Uh, it is, it is governed by the HCDA. And it was legislated that way because, uh, the, uh, the mayor of the time, uh, Frank Fossey, uh, had neglected that critical part of the center of the city. Uh, and then later yank legislature, yanked it away and created an entirely separate district, um, and gave it to an entirely different planning agency, which is the HCDA. So, um, To go back about 10 years, um, when, when the towers first started coming up, there was a lot of public outcry and a lot of public skepticism. That this was, going to become a weird sci-fi futuristic world that nobody who grew up in Hawaii would relate to and it would be very alien. And the AIA and the Urban Design Committee of the AIA actually commissioned a giant model to be built by the students up at the UH Architecture School and we had that down and it was like 12 feet by 12 feet. It was enormous and we put that in the AIA office on Fort Street Mall to try to explain to people with workshops that this is what you are looking at. That's where you're going to be, there's the street that you know, here's the building that's going to go on the street. But the reason that Kakaako is so so different is because it's on an entirely different building code from the rest of the city. It's a form-based zoning code and the rest of the city of Honolulu is in the Euclidean which is sort of a function-based code which determines the size, the shape, the location of buildings. And the good part about Kakaako is the fact that they mandated that buildings be built right to the sidewalk because that creates a much more interesting walking environment for pedestrians. You have shops, you have retail use right on the street and that's a good thing. I mean when we think of the ideal, we think of Greenwich Village in New York, we think of North Village in Boston. These are wonderful walking streets with little shops, both sides, trees, lots of people, very safe, fascinating. It's a place that people love to get out of their car and just walk. So that was kind of the original intent of Kakaako was to create this more intensive use of continuous street frontage walking environments with lots of shops. What I think hasn't worked out is that is that HCDA was kind of twisted by developers to allow these parking podiums to go up above the shops and that's where we ended up getting these 80-foot tall canyons that you are lamenting. And I really think that that is where we have gone wrong. All you have to do is walk around the Whole Foods Building to realize, oh my god, I feel like an ant in a canyon and to realize they have let it go too far. The walking environment has become alienating. But there is hope because that's just one block of Kakaako. There's 40 other blocks in Kakaako yet to be built. So there's hope. Oh, I mean, there's so many things to unpack from that. Well, I tried to give a quick overview. There's a history. There are some good things. There are some really good things. I mean, in looking at Kakaako, you realize how badly the rest of Honolulu has been served by the Euclidean zoning code because it created these parking lots on the streets. It created these strip malls that are 100 feet behind the street and we lost all. We became a car city when we were actually a very charming walking city as of about 1940. So Kakaako is a return in some ways to a more compact, intensive use of land. It's just that the pendulum has swung too far to one extreme. Yeah, you know, just a couple of thoughts, many, many thoughts on what you've said. When I came out here, I was assigned here by the Coast Guard and they said, well, you can go to St. Louis, you can go to Honolulu. I said, I think I'll go to Honolulu. Good choice. Yeah. They said, they tried to convince me and they said, it's a great walking city and it's got charm in every direction and it's one of the reasons I came out here. And indeed, when I came out here, Chinatown and the whole central business district was really charming and little shops and mom-and-pops and all those things and you could really enjoy yourself at the same time. You could also drive to those places. So it was the best of both worlds. And then, you know, you had this kind of little town, you know, but that's a good point. I forgot to say, I shouldn't sort of write off everything outside of Kakaako because we have our special districts and Chinatown is one of them and Waikiki is one of them. And what do you see there? Great walking environments because they have been exempted from the parking rules and the setback rules of the rest of the city. So they've done a fantastic job in Chinatown. I mean, Chinatown has its problems, but physically it's a charming little low-rise walking retail environment. And we know it lacks, it has some other problems. And then Waikiki, again, Kawakawa Avenue is probably one of the top 10 walking streets in the world. When Kawakawa is busy, when you take back to pre-COVID, Waikiki, that place would be packed at 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock midnight with people from all over the world. And truly, it was a great walking street. And it still is. It will recover. In fact, it's already recovering, as you know. So Kakaako, when all the noise came out about fixing up Kakaako and HCDA is going to do all this amazing stuff, it took probably 20 years or more from the time HCDA was established to the time anybody really gave a rip and the developers came in there and they built stuff. It was more like the automobile repair shops. And there were a couple of houses of ill-repute that lived in there. There was extraordinary waste considering that it was just a few blocks away from downtown. So a part of the argument to develop Kakaako, only what, 10, 15 years ago, even though it had been dormant for a long time, was that this is going to be an extension of the downtown. It is going to enhance the downtown. It's going to give us a larger, better, more robust, more aesthetic downtown. And I said to myself, gee whiz, how are they going to do that? Because HCDA doesn't control downtown and downtown doesn't control HCDA. And how are they going to do it? This really requires, you know, it requires sacrifice by developers. It requires very careful thinking by planners and by, you know, planning, permitting agencies in the city and for that matter of the state. Because I know that although HCDA was involved in establishing the guidelines, DPP was also involved. And they had something to say. They had the same power that they had with other parts of the city, but they did have some power. And they allowed some things to happen that really were not so good. So when you consider that, when you consider what we were told about what was going to happen there and how it was going to be this, you know, re-envisioning of the downtown area and how it was going to be people could live there and then walk to their jobs, right? Or bike to their jobs. It would be all of those planning points all rolled into one and it would be happiness beyond description. But none of that really happened, did it? You're right. Is that when I think back to the earliest kind of promotion of concoct, I kept hearing the phrase live, work and play all in one. It was going to be, it was going to be a neighborhood where you could live, work and play. You could go to the beach. You could walk to your job in downtown. You could, you could go over to Alamona and do your shopping. So those, those locational functions are, are still there. It's just that what we're seeing right now is the, is the low hanging fruit that developers are grabbing, which is the luxury condo projects that can, that have a great view of the beach. So I, I really think the, the further development of Cacaco is inland. Obviously they're, they're running out of beachfront and, you know, highway front land. So they are starting to move inland and that's where you're seeing more affordable housing. You're seeing that artist's housing project off of Capulani. You're seeing affordable housing on Ward Avenue. So I, I think this is going to be the next phase of construction because there, there's, I hope so, but does it pencil out, you know, because, you know, when the Howard Hughes Corporation got in there and built those condos, it was one condo that they built was 100 million dollars. Yeah. I think it's sold for just about that. It's extraordinary. That was like a, that was, that's when the bell rings at the state fair, you know, bang, a hundred million dollars is a new world. And then of course, you don't want to have riffraff in your apartment building. So you have a lot of security and you have those escarpments and canyons outside. And, and you, but on the other hand, you look down at the beach and, you know, you, you have the exquisite opportunity. I think the problem with some of those condos is that they, they, they form a very strong condo associations and associations among the condo associations. And when something goes wrong in Alamoana Park, they speak on it. And they have a lot of influence about, you know, how you develop, you know, Capulani rather character in the park. And then of course, you have the problem with the homeless. So you have your hundred million dollar condo and you look straight down and you see a blue tent. I was wrong with this picture. So, you know, the problem is that up till now, it's been a multimillion dollar experience to buy a condo in Kakaako, multimillion. And if we thought, you know, five or 10 years ago that we were going to have not only the aesthetic, but the lifestyle and the demuclic height that you could find in this European village kind of environment. No, that didn't happen. But it cost you two or three million dollars to get in. And probably it's more than that now, because, you know, prices have gone through the roof. So it's probably three or four million dollars to get in. And so it can't be a place where some, some working staff from downtown, you know, can live there. And this creates a problem on Sunday evening on 60 minutes. There was a very interesting piece about these large corporations, one of them, the largest, I think, headquartered in Toronto by homes all over the country at whatever the price is. They restore them to a limited degree. And then they rent them at extraordinarily high rents based on what they paid and the cost of renovation. And people cannot afford to buy them because they're competing with these big companies. And for that matter, they can't afford to live in them as a tenant because the rents are so high. And I suggest to you that to the extent we were hoping for affordable in terms of purchase and affordable in terms of rental in Kakaako, we're miles away from that now. Yeah. Now don't forget, in all fairness, there was a big project 801 South Street. Those condos, there were two towers, about a thousand units, and they sold for 400 to 500,000. And that's maybe five years ago. Okay. So and now there was another big project on Ward Avenue near Halicauvilla, has a long drugs in the base. Those also were more in the $600,000 to $700,000 range condos. That is a different cut of buyer, definitely. And there were a lot of local buyers in those two projects. So I think like any city, your prime views, your beachfront properties are going to be your expensive condos. And as you move inland, you're going to get a wider range of cost and unaffordability. So give Kakaako some time. I just think in terms of housing, and that is a crying need. We have a huge need for housing throughout the city, throughout the island. So we can't blame it all on Kakaako. If the developers right now see the lucrative market in million dollar condos, you have to recognize market forces. But I think the government has to be somewhat involved in encouraging more affordable housing. And then there are several isolated affordable housing projects in Kakaako. The government has been involved in one way or another. Either they furnished the land or they gave some kind of tax incentive. But I think architecturally, I think we haven't been, we haven't really used other means of lowering the cost of construction. We've insisted on massive parking structures on all of these projects. We can drop those. You are not required to have two spaces per condo anymore. Kakaako has discretion to drop it to 0.5 parking per condo. So let's whack those parking podiums. They're not only creating canyons, but they're creating huge expense. A parking stall alone, even in a multi-story structure, is easily $50,000 to $100,000. So that bumps up the cost of your unit. And then B, we stopped this ridiculous emphasis on air conditioning every bloody square inch of our buildings. This is just a criminal that we insist on these glass skin towers that cause colossal energy use and colossal monthly maintenance fees for the owners. So again, that's part of affordability. It's one thing even to buy a $2 million condo, but don't forget you're going to pay $3,000 a month on your maintenance fees on top of your mortgage fee. So cut the parking, cut the air conditioning use. Use air conditioning in a much more targeted fashion, whether it's in your kitchen or your bedroom. Don't air condition every hallway, every public space. And that cuts a huge amount off of your equipment costs and your energy costs. So these are ways of creating more affordable housing in Chicago. Well, you know, one of the things that pops out of this for me, anyway, is that if you have these expensive condos, millions or hundreds of millions, as the case may be, you're not really playing to the local market. You're not playing to those kids who are getting out of college and want to have a life here. You're sending them away because they could never afford those condos, either in the purchase or the rental or even the operating expense, the common area maintenance, you know, it's so high. So it's just not a place for local people and local kids. And what happens is, I'm sure you'll agree that it was not a Hawaii resident that bought that $100 million condo. It was somebody else from some far away place. And so, you know, the average Joe in this town can't afford two or three million, no way. And so what happens is these condos have been and are being purchased and spun by people outside the state, even on the second and third sale. The local people just aren't there, can't be there, won't be there. And it's not going to get cheaper. It's going to get, it is getting more expensive. So the promise of providing housing for the people of Hawaii was not met. I remember Neil Abacromby talking about how this was going to provide housing for the people. It hasn't. Furthermore, you know, the promise of a six-story kind of walk-up, I shouldn't say walk-up, that would be outside the ADA, wouldn't it? A six-story building, you know, like all those renderings we saw, not a chance. You have to have a bottom line. The bottom line has been huge for some of these development companies. You will notice that there is really a difference, a fundamental difference between the Howard Hughes and the Kakaako and the Kamehameha Schools and the Kakaako downtown. I agree. I think Kamehameha Schools being a local investor and a local landowner, they are much more committed to trying to attract and provide an environment for the local buyer. And their vision of Kakaako is a lot closer, I think, to more reasonable, sustainable urban design. They are reusing some of their old buildings. They're going low-rise with some of their housing, I mean, as in six-stories. And so I think there's actually two different visions of developers working there. And clearly Kamehameha Schools knows they're not going to just pick up in 25 years and say, bye, you know, and that's Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes is just going to, you know, pocket their billions and move back to Texas and leave whatever's there. If it all gets submerged with sea level rise, there won't be their problem because they have sold their projects and they have moved on. And that's the nature of, you know, capitalist developers. So, you know, you mentioned, you know, sea level rise and all that. And that was a big discussion in our meetings, you know, your AIA meetings back 10 years ago. Everybody was worried that, A, you know, there would be flooding. B, there was an underdeveloped sewage system there. That would be a problem. And other infrastructure issues that nobody wanted to belly up to, including HCDA. And so Kakaako was built ignoring those issues, at least as far as I know. And so, you know, it creates a kind of handicap, doesn't it? But ultimately, there will be sea level rise, guaranteed right now here today with you. And that will affect those buildings. And ultimately, the underdeveloped infrastructure that is not adequate for the number of, you know, residents and apartments and all that, that will bite somebody, don't you think? Well, that is a, when you say underdeveloped infrastructure, let's be sure we're not talking about sewage and water and electricity, because that's what they spent the first 20 years building. So Kakaako is totally, I mean, it has capacity to build all those 50 towers that Howard Hughes wants to do in Kamehameha schools. They have the capacity. They sure as heck are not prepared for sea level rise in that we all know the streets aren't any taller, aren't any higher in Kakaako. So what they have been doing though is they have been jacking up all of the new buildings, like the one where the old Nobu restaurant is that that thing's a good five feet higher than the rest of the street. So basically, when you come out of your condo in 50 years, you will, instead of hiring an Uber, you're going to be hiring a gondol. So that's, that's it. But you're, they literally are moving all of their electrical equipment up to higher floors so that water can actually come in on the ground floor of these buildings and not, and not cause any kind of disruption. Other than, you know, yes, you, yes, your, your feet are going to get wet as you wade through your six inches of water in the lobby. But, you know, but you talk about building smart going forward, you know, and being more efficient and not wasting with the glass covered buildings and lots of air conditioning and the like and all that. But query, what's, what's left? What, what, what is the acreage? And last time I looked, it was pretty much developed right up to Queen Street. Is there more land there that we should be thinking about? Well, right. No, really, the, what's got to be developed is, is all that big area between Howard Hughes's chunk, which is that they all want to end, and Kamehameha school's chunk, which is way down at the downtown, and that there's, there's really a lot of acreage there. And moving Malca. I mean, Malca has really not been developed. As you know, Queen Street is still the headquarters for, you know, Rover slippers and auto body and occasional bars and breweries. But yeah, there, you get a wonderful sense of old cock-a-coe when you go on Queen, because there's the tiny little land parcels in there and there's kind of funky little shops. So there is still, there's still a lot of room, a lot of land that needs to be worked up. Well, that's that's optimistic in the sense that if they, if they listened to you and me and other architects and engineers, they would, they would build smarter the next, the next phase, you know. But what, what, what is the, what is the reason they would have to do that with, you know, it's not clear that the developer looking at the bottom line is going to build for love or community or to, you know, to make the city a better quality of life. No, he's going to look for the bottom line. How, how, just how do we achieve what you are talking about? Well, I think HCDA is a key, because again, they are the agency that, that approves all construction and, and they call the shots on, on the form and the, and the size and the location of buildings. They, they just need to clamp down on these canyons. They've gotten a lot of things right. They have a complete streets program. They're, they're really emphasizing street trees, street furniture, pedestrian walkways. It, you, you just have to realize that things haven't really filled in entirely yet. You know, you'll, so you'll see some blocks where, where there's, they've, they've adequately kind of furnished the street and made it, made it attractive. And then you'll go to the next block and it's, and it's the old cock, cockle. It's, it's untouched and it's baking hot and there's, you know, nothing but warehouses. So I, but what I really am struck by in cock, cockle is the popularity of cock, cockle amongst the younger generations. They absolutely get it. And so ironic, they can't possibly afford to live there, but yet the, the youth, you know, the 20 somethings of 30 and 40 somethings of Honolulu, they make a beeline for cock, cockle at night and they park in the structures and they go get out and walk. And so I think they, they are attracted to the urban density. And I think that is the thing that cock, cockle got right. They, they have, they have gone back to a denser form of urban living. And that creates opportunities for excitement and interaction amongst people that, you know, it's, it's what makes New York great or Boston great or, or Philadelphia or San Francisco. So one of the problems that gets in the way, though, is that the cost of land, because of all this construction, if I give you a condo, the cost of fortune that raises the appraised value of everybody in sight. And so, so that you, you know, you have rent, the cost of occupancy is that much greater. And so if I want to establish a mom and pop or a restaurant, what have you, and try to participate in this village thing that you are describing, it's going to cost me a lot for rent. And I have to pass that on to those kids who don't have enough money to buy into it, who come down, I agree with you, I agree, absolutely, who come down for the excitement. And, and Kamehameha Schools has been very good about its contribution to that village quality. A lot of, a lot of its land has been used for, you know, village type development, small shops and the like. The salt, the salt development is, is a beautiful example of a reuse of a historic building, creating a more vibrant, high density environment, retail environment, very popular. I think, I think there's your hope right there. A lot of the first generation retail tenants have been forced out already, they cannot pay the rent. And so the, it's really an odd situation where these kids who can't afford the apartments and could not even live there as a tenant, they come down and they spend it, they live at home, they spend their last nickel in these expensive restaurants and bars and exciting places and all that. But the, but those costs of those, you know, of being a consumer, those places goes up and up. I don't know how this can be fixed. And that's my last question to you, Scott. How can this be fixed? How can we have what we hoped to have? We can expand doors, you know, across Queen Street, the ice, there is all the auto body shop land there. It's not the highest and best used, if you consider all the multi, you know, million dollar condos. But the question is, how can we expand this and refine it and perfect it and fix it so that it is at least partly what we hoped it would be as a, an extension of the downtown, a metropolitan area. Yeah, it isn't really, I never quite agreed that it would be simply an extension of downtown. I think it's a unique neighborhood of its own sort of ilk. It's a work, live, play. Downtown is an older financial model, which doesn't really function too well at night and on weekends, as you know. It isn't, it isn't the place where a lot of people hang out after, after work hours. So I like the cock-ockle approach, which is much more integrated living environment, retail play. And I think the key answer is, is we have to, we have to put pressure on HCDA when they, when they bring up these public hearings and they say, well, Howard Hughes has a proposal to build a new tower over here on this park. We need, we need to get in there and demand that, that the environment is not another canyon and that, and that, you know, there needs to be a wider range of housing types rather than just three million dollar condos. How do you build a feasible building? You know, that's not a canyon building. That's not a huge tall, you know, stab in the sky kind of building and still have it affordable enough for, for the next generation to enjoy living there and, and, and enjoy the life there. Well, you take out, you cut the parking, you don't need parking, you're living in cock-ockle. Cut the parking, that cuts $100,000 off the cost of every unit. You, you cut the air conditioning, you can take, you know, $25,000 off every unit just by using judicious air conditioning and using natural ventilation. And, and on thirdly, you really ought to be using more landscaping in these high-rises. We're, we're being outflanked by other countries in Southeast Asia that are using high-rise landscaping in very creative ways to, to shade and to create cooling and to create much more, much more amenable park, park spaces up and on the high levels of, of high-rises so that high-rises don't become just simply an elevator tower to nowhere, that you, you can actually drop down two floors and go into a little public park up on the 30th floor or the 20th floor or the 10th floor. And, and those are, I mean, those are, we have the perfect environment, the perfect climate for those kind of uses of, of our natural, our natural temperatures and we're just not using them. And that all creates a much more affordable housing project. Yeah, I would spend more time there. I'll tell you now. One of the other things is this, we don't have that much time left to talk about it, but in order to fix the situation seems to me that you have to change the rules. You have to change the rules for HCDA. You have to change the rules for the Department of Planning and Permitting to the extent they apply. And you have to change the tax rules because what happens is I buy a condo for two million dollars and the first thing, and I don't live there, nobody lives there. It's, it's, it's ancient and rather it's open. It's abandoned property really. And then I'm, all I'm doing is I'm getting my broker to try to spend it for three and four million dollars and, and so I can make a killing on the appreciation. And, and there are people who do that. It happens. It is happening. So property, you could change the policy and stop that from happening. No. And our tax code does, it gives it, it gives a break for, for owner occupants, but then if you have a second property and you don't live in it, you pay a higher tax rate and, and we can easily adjust those things in the case of Kakaoka where you've got 80% vacancy in some of those luxury units like Hokua. That's, that's ridiculous. And, and we should, we should be definitely jacking the, the property rates of those absentee owners who are not even renting out those units. They're simply hanging onto them as investments. They're, they're just, they're just parking their money there because their money is not safe in Hong Kong or Taipei or Singapore or work, or wherever they're coming. A lot of them are coming from Asia and they're just using it as an investment. Yeah. We have to take, we have to manage offshore investment. I always felt that way. And then we'll all be better off. And the other thing I wanted to say is I hope you can come back Scott because we have miles to go before we sleep. There are other neighborhoods as, as Martin de Spang wrote to us this morning. There are other issues, architectural and planning issues around the city. When you mentioned as, of course, Chinatown, to, you know, perfect life in Chinatown, there are things that can be done. And of course, Kali, Kalihi, because when you and I were doing our discussions about Kakaako, there was, there was this thought that the next big neighborhood would be Kalihi. And nothing much has happened in Kalihi, but what we have learned, what we are learning in Kakaako, don't you agree, could be very informed, very important in developing Kalihi, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I could see, I could see, you know, the location of Kalihi makes it an absolute gem and a perfect candidate for redevelopment to kind of match and complement the downtown. So. And you'll come back. I will come back. Okay. Happy to. Scott Wilson, architect and planner and a fellow who really cares a lot about the way our city develops and that means the quality of life for all of us. Thank you so much Scott. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.