Category Archives: Housing

A dissenting view of the Aloha Stadium redevelopment

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Last month I received an unsolicited phone call from a former islander now living in the San Francisco Bay Area who has a background in community development and affordable housing finance. He was anxious to call my attention to the state’s proposal to redevelop the 90-acre site of the aged Aloha Stadium, building a new but smaller stadium as part of what is being called the “New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District.”

He asked that I not use his name because of some specific problems, which he explained, that would result from going public.

The bottom line, he said, is this: “The taxpayers of Hawaii are getting screwed again….It’s a land giveaway to a private developer.”

“Affordable housing should be no-brainer,” he said, and should be the top priority for the state. The fact that the state is instead pursuing a deal that would give long-term development rights to a private developer, recognizing up front that “market changes” could reasonably justify changes from what is initially proposed, is “borderline criminal.”

“Who is the state’s leadership looking out for?” he asked.

He noted how unique the Aloha Stadium situation is.

“Even in the Bay Area, we don’t have 90 acres of avialable vacant public land, where no relocations of existing tenants will be required.” It’s also important that the Halawa site has access to public transportation, and is adjacent to a rail station (in the event Honolulu’s rail system is ever actually finished).

He believes strongly that instead of the proposed hotel, offices, and market priced or luxury homes with a token nod to affordable housing requirements (as we have seen at work in Kakaako), at least 50-60 acres of the site should be set aside for new workforce RENTAL housing like that being built in many mainland cities. This would still leave room for a new stadium to be built on the site.

“This means high quality, affordable rental apartments with rents affordable to teachers, health workers, service industry workers, and young professionals who cannot afford to buy,” he said, and could also include a percentage of supportive housing to help formerly homeless vets, elderly, and small families recovering from substance abuse, domestic violence.

Land costs and financing are usually the biggest hurdles affordable housing developers in Hawaii have to overcome. Yet here is a situation in which public land is available, and the state has already ponied up $350 million in public funds in the form of $50 million in general funds, and another $300 million in general obligation bond funding.

He said working families could expect to spend 30% to 40% of their monthly budget for such workforce housing as compared to 50% or more for many who are current renters, and would enjoy quality housing as compared to 50-60 year old substandard rental housing found in many parts of McCully, Moiliili, Kalihi, and Waipahu.

And although the “entertainment district” project has been fast tracked due to the supposed “urgency” of replacing the Aloha Stadium, one of the first official pronouncements was to tell the stadium’s anchor tenant, the University of Hawaii football team, that it cannot be guaranteed any special consideration, and that the terms, conditions, and costs associated with playing in the new stadium will be up to future negotiations with the developer finally selected.

In other words, when push comes to shove, a new stadium for UH football isn’t at all a priority. It’s just been used as a cover story to get the public to acquiesce.

My caller broke it down this way.

“It’s like you hire a contractor to build a house on land that you already own, and you provide them your credit card to use,” he said. “Then, after the house is built, you learn you will have to pay rent to live in it, and your hired contractor will decide what that rent will be.”

What kind of a crazy deal is the public being saddled with here?

What’s worse, the selection of a developer is being done in secret negotiations, behind closed doors. When the public actual terms are finally revealed to the public, it’s almost certainly going to be presented as a “take it or leave it” deal. Then, once the deal is approved and we’re locked in to one developer, “it is going to be hard to rein them in.”

In essence, a private developer is going to be allowed to steal the unique stadium site away from the state and Hawaii taxpayers.

“In the SF Bay Area, public officials would be run out of town for proposing something like this,” he said.

The other side of the housing crisis

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Here’s a little vignette about economic inequality to start out the new year. I suppose it’s an example of the 1% lifestyle, or maybe the .1%.

The housing crisis looks a lot different from up there at the top.

There’s a new house being built not far away, just around the corner at the end of Kealaolu Place. There’s a dust fence now around the lot, and an existing home is being demolished.

So being curious, I had to check real estate records to get more info.

The existing luxury home, the one that is being demolished, was just 12 years old, brand new in 2008, according to the city’s  building permit records. The building permit had been issued in March 2007.

The 2-story house is/was on an 11,500 square foot lot that stretches along Waialae Stream, with a panoramic view of Waialae Golf Course.  The existing home, the one currently being demolished, was valued for real property tax purposes (in 2020) at $2,849,100, land value of $1,471,700, for a total assessed value of $4,320,800.

Existing home currently being demolished

New owners bought the property in September 2018 for $4,400,000, real property records show. Yes, that’s $4.4 million.

And they applied for a demolition permit a year later, as well as a permit to build a new home.

The permit file says the new building will be a 6,589 square foot 2-story home with pool and two wet bars with an estimated construction cost, accepted by the city, of $1,800,000.

That comes out to just pennies over $273 per foot, if I calculate it correctly.

That is a dirt cheap per foot price for Honolulu, and I doubt someone willing to pay $4.4 million and then scrape off the existing house is going to replace it with something on the low end.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure it is going to be a gorgeous new home. I’m equally sure it won’t be built for $273 per foot.

I did a quick search for current costs for new construction in Hawaii and found these estimates for a single family home.

Single-family home

    • Low (per square foot) – $290
    • High (per square foot) – $780

It’s hard enough to process the degree of economic inequality that makes a $4 million scrape-off possible.

But then to have the city give up revenue by underestimating construction costs of this luxury home, which immediately reduces the permit fee. Okay, it’s not a huge discount, but to this ordinary person, that gift from the city in the form of a low-ball cost estimate just adds insult to injury.

I haven’t been able to find much at all about the current owners of the property, except that they also own several high priced Kakaako condominium units, including a 3,567 foot, 4-bedroom, 4-1/2 bath 36th floor unit in the 1108 Auahi Condominium currently valued for tax purposes at $6.1 million.

To be fair, the owners are paying over $39,000 of property tax this year on the Kealaolu Place property, records show. That will go down if or when it becomes their primary residence.

Hawaii Supreme Court upholds jury verdict in dispute between neighbors

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The Hawaii Supreme Court this week reversed a 2019 ruling by the Intermediate Court of Appeals and reinstated a Honolulu jury’s award of more than $600,000 to Donna Lee Ching. The decision appears to put an end to a longstanding dispute between Ching and her neighbors over an easement for access to her property in lower Manoa. In this case, Ching’s neighbors were also family, adding sizzle to the tensions between the parties. On the other side of the fence, so to speak, were Denby Dung, Miss Hawaii 2001; her sister, Darah, voted Miss Chinatown in 2003; along with their brother, mother, and uncle, who is Ching’s second cousin.

The Supreme Court’s 46-page decision written by Justice Michael Wilson can be found on the Judiciary website.

The 2019 ICA ruling had overturned an earlier jury verdict in Ching’s favor back in March 2016. The jury at that time agreed the evidence in the case showed the Dung family had engaged in a civil conspiracy against Ching by causing repeated nuisances aimed at making her life miserable, invaded her privacy, and engaged in malicious prosecution. The ICA threw out the jury’s damage award, which included $500,000 in general damages, $100,000 in punitive damages, and $16,600 in special damages, and instead ordered a new trial in the case.

Ching appealed the ICA verdict, and the Supreme Court this week ruled in her favor, and against the Dung family, on each issue raised on appeal. The court ordered that the original jury verdict be reinstated.

Ching was represented by a team of attorneys led by Terry Revere, who has won several large judgements on behalf of condominium owners in several disputes with neighbors or their condominium associations.

The Ching/Dung dispute, which extended over much of two decades, included an astounding array of allegations and cross-allegations raised in the original jury trial which I recounted in a March 2016 Civil Beat column, “Ian Lind: The Dung Sisters’ Family Feud Gets Out Of Control.”

Here’s the lead of that much longer column.

A Circuit Court jury in Honolulu last week awarded more than $600,000 in damages to a Honolulu woman, culminating a decade-long legal dispute between neighbors over a shared driveway that gave rise to rival allegations of harassment, attempted intimidation, trespassing, invasion of privacy, character assassination and more.

Following a three-week trial, the jury found former Miss Hawaii Denby Dung, her sister, Darah, a former Miss Chinatown USA, along with their brother, mother, and uncle, liable for damages to their neighbor, Donna Lee Ching.

The parties are more than neighbors, they are family. Ching and Dixon Dung, the uncle of the Dung sisters and a defendant in the case, are second cousins, according to documents filed in the case.

The jury found members of the Dung family engaged in a civil conspiracy to harass, threaten and intimidate Ching in order to discourage her from pursuing the driveway dispute. The jury also found the Dungs invaded Ching’s privacy and defamed her, including by posting derogatory comments on their shared Facebook page.

I would encourage you to read the column. It’s an amazing tale.

A historic property right around the corner

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Shifting our early morning walk from the beach to the streets of Kahala led to a little discovery right around the corner.

We were near the end of our morning walk, heading home along the short block of Aukai Avenue between Pueo Street and Kealaolu, when we noticed a small, rather nondescript sign in front of a house.

I’ve seen the sign before but never paid any attention. This time we went over to get a closer look, and found that it announced “viewing hours” on the second Saturday of each month.

Peering down the driveway, there wasn’t much of anything to see, as the house was mostly hidden behind a concrete block wall.

Then I noticed a small plaque on a wall on the other side of the driveway. The house, it seems, is considered a “Historic Residence,” not because of who lived there, but because it was designed by renowned Hawaii architect Vladimir Ossipoff.

I guess we’ll have to check it out on the second Saturday, May 9, during the posted viewing hours.

In the meantime, I went looking for information on Gardner and Esther Black, and the history of the house.

Dr. Black’s obituary which appeared in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on January 4, 1963 provides some background.

Black graduated from the University of Chicago medical school, then was an intern at Queen’s Hospital in 1921-22. In 1921, he married Esther King of Lake Forest, Illinois.

Black served as president of the Honolulu County Medical Society between 1939-40. In 1949, he moved to the Big Island, where he served as the Parker Ranch physician until 1955. He died at age 66.

After Dr. and Mrs. Black moved to Kamueala, the Ossipoff-designed property became the home of Kenneth J. Pratt and his wife, Mildred Wriston Pratt. Kenneth Pratt was a long-time Bank of Hawaii vice-president, and brother of former Hawaiian Electric president C. Dudley Pratt.

Pratt was, according to an obituary: ““Canoe steersman, surfer, Bank of Hawaii vice-president and oral historian.” Among his legacies are a wonderful series of oral history interviews with prominent Hawaii watermen done on behalf of the Outrigger Canoe Club’s Oral History Committee. Many of these interviews can be easily found online.

After Mildred Pratt’s death in 2007, the house was listed for sale at $2.3 million, later reduced to $2.2 million.

11,800 sq ft lot in “old Kahala” with huge back yard and pool towards the front. Refurbished 3 bdrm, 2 bath plus 1 bdrm, 1 bath cottage. See this beauty today!

Real estate records show it was purchased by its current owners for $1.5 million in 2009.

In 2014, the “Dr. Gardner and Esther Black Residence” was listed on the Hawaii Register of Historic Places.

It is currently listed “For Rent” on Apartments.com for $6,500 per month with a minimum 6-month lease.

As a historic property, the current owners pay just $300 annually in real property tax.