A light breeze was blowing Monday at Hale Haukani — fitting that Haukani is the swirling wind that moves through Mānoa Valley — as a crowd that included Gov. Josh Green, Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, University of Hawai‘i leaders and others gathered to bless the new $170 million student housing complex at UH Mānoa.
Located on the mauka side of Dole Street between the East-West Center and Mānoa stream, the new dorm — intended primarily for graduate students and junior faculty, although undergrads can also reside there — consists of two towers, 12 and 18 stories, with 316 units and 558 beds. You'll find studio, two-, three- and four-bedroom layouts.
The first residents were set to move in Monday, Aug. 18.
"Some of you will have heard me say that my standard for student housing is 'Would I let my own children live there?' And I want to state clearly that this is too nice for my children," UH President Wendy Hensel joked in her remarks to the crowd, garnering a laugh. "This is first-class housing and very exciting for the new residents who will be moving in today."
She told Aloha State Daily after the blessing that having housing options for students "that are attractive and will enhance their educational journey and help them reach their goals is just wonderful."
Work on Hale Haukani began before Hensel's tenure at UH started. How does it feel to cross the finish line?
It feels good, she says with a laugh.
"I feel like we're just getting started."
It's the university's second housing project developed through a public-private partnership, or P3.
According to UH, Hale Haukani is privately owned and financed by the Collegiate Housing Foundation, or CHF, and was developed and constructed by Greystar Development Services, LLC and Swinerton Builders on university land leased to CHF. It'll be privately operated for CHF by a Greystar subsidiary.
Rental income will be used to repay tax-exempt bonds while $2 million a year from UH will help subsidize rents "so that they remain below the market rate for comparable units," UH noted.
When asked about the importance of P3s in creating housing for students, Kalbert Young, vice president of budget and finance and chief financial officer for UH, told ASD after the blessing that universities, cities and states across the country are challenged to provide affordable housing for students or special populations.
"In Hawai‘i, the university didn't have the financial resources and the State of Hawai‘i wasn't able to step in to provide those resources to build new housing, even though we have a housing crisis in Hawai‘i," he says. "Finding private partners and putting together a business team and structure that get it done, it's a first, and it's monumental because it's able to fill a large gap that without, we would not have been able to address housing."
In terms of campus housing needs, Young says that for undergrads, on-campus housing is still "a little bit short of demand."
"We have virtually no graduate family housing," he noted. "This is such a new piece of the inventory puzzle to provide graduate-level housing."
With its opening, UH Mānoa now has 4,000 beds for students either on or adjacent to its campus, the most in its history.
UH Mānoa interim Provost Vassilis Syrmos said in an announcement Monday that the new facility not only addresses a "longstanding housing shortage," but also strengthens the university's ability to recruit and retain grad students, who contribute to "cutting-edge research and teaching."
UH says, too, that the new units are expected to lessen the pressure on Honolulu's rental market by freeing up off-campus housing.
In addition to the new housing, UH Mānoa's Children's Center will relocate from Castle Memorial Hall to a new 9,000-square-foot facility within the complex. This will ultimately expand its capacity from 90 to approximately 130 keiki and offer greater training opportunities for pre-K educators in partnership with the College of Education and other academic units, UH noted.
UH's first P3 project has been open for two years now.
Ground broke on RISE, or the Residences for Innovative Student Entrepreneurs, in early 2022 and it opened in the fall of 2023.
The innovation center and student housing is located on the site of the former Atherton YMCA. Meanwhile, the Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship, or PACE, which is housed in UH Mānoa's Shidler College of Business, expanded into and manages the center.
The center was funded through a public-private partnership between UH, UH Foundation and Hunt Development Group Hawai‘i.
UH recently announced a third P3 project that has the university partnering with the not-for-profit Community Development Alliance Corp. Hilo to manage and redevelop the Hale Kāwili Apartments, a complex located adjacent to the UH-Hilo campus at 430 W. Kāwili St.
"[The Hale Haukani] project and our RISE project are proof this university will find alternative methods to modernize our facilities at a minimal cost to the taxpayer, and execute plans on time and on budget," Hensel told the crowd. "We'll continue to explore these projects as well as to modernize the other facilities on campus."
Green told the audience that these P3 partnerships "are the way of the present and the future, as you know, because it's not easy always to find adequate resources but we want to keep things affordable for our families, our kids, those who come study here."
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Stephanie Salmons can be reached at stephanie@alohastatedaily.com.
