Unprecedented half-billion dollar face lift for Waikiki
A half billion dollar-plus program is renovating an old favorite of tourists: Waikiki.
The area fell on hard times in recent years with its main drag dominated by low-rent hotels and fallen down shopping centers.
The money is being spent on new and renovated hotels and restaurants. Projects also include new public spaces designed to bring light, trees and Hawaiian entertainment into what had become a warren of narrow streets and concrete blocks, wrote The New York Times.
It’s possibly the most sweeping development ever done at once in the former playground of Hawaiian royalty, said Jay Talwar, senior vice president of marketing for the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau.
“I don’t know that it’s ever happened en masse as it’s happening now,” he told the Times.
A company leading the redevelopment move is Outrigger Enterprises Group. The hotelier has spent years razing, renovating and rebuilding properties on 7.9 acres in a once run-down area of Waikiki. The result is the Waikiki Beach Walk, a $535-million hotel, condominium and retail project opening in phases in the next two to three years.
The Beach Walk project also brings new hotels.
Outrigger is taking reservations at its new Embassy Suites Hotel-Waikiki Beach Walk, a two-tower, 421-suite property one block from the ocean between Lewers and Beachwalk streets, which opened last month. The hotel has introductory rates starting at $269.
Outrigger also has opened the Wyndham Waikiki Beach Walk, a time-share property managed by Wyndham Vacation Resorts.
Around the corner from the Beach Walk, Halekulani Corp. is putting finishing touches on a renovation of its Waikiki Parc hotel. The company is positioning the Parc as the hip sister of its elegant Halekulani on the beach across the street, said the Times.
Kamehameha Schools, a major Waikiki landowner, hopes to restore a Hawaiian sense of place to the heart of Waikiki with an $84-million redesign of its Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center, a three-block-long building that is home to luxury retailers.
More projects are on the drawing board.
By the end of 2007, Outrigger hopes to introduce another new operator to Waikiki to rejuvenate the budget Ohana Islander Waikiki property, said an Outrigger spokeswoman.
Report by David Wilkening
David
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