The City and County of Honolulu is continuing its push to develop thousands of affordable housing units across O‘ahu — now its Department of Housing and Land Management is seeking a development partner for a new affordable rental community on city-owned land in Royal Kunia.
Located at the corner of Kupuohi Street and Kupuna Loop, the project site is home to the Royal Kunia Park & Ride and the Honolulu Community Action Program's Head Start child care facility. The site includes about 120,000 square feet of space for affordable housing as well as an adjoining parcel for a future child care facility, the city said in a recent announcement.
The selected developer will be offered a 75-year ground lease and must conduct "robust" community engagement throughout the planning and design process.
Partnering with the development community to build housing on city-owned lands is one of the components of a strategic housing plan the city unveiled earlier this year. You can find the plan here.
DHLM Director-designate Kevin Auger noted in the announcement that city has identified 10 city-owned properties that could potentially deliver 2,500 housing units. This is the eighth city-owned property activated so far this year.
"Each property tells a different chapter in Oʻahu’s housing story, and Royal Kunia is about strengthening a family-oriented community with new opportunities for residents leveraging public lands,” he said in the announcement.
Auger told Aloha State Daily via email that the Royal Kunia project is expected to be affordable, serving households at 60% of the area median income or below, or workforce housing, serving households making between 60% and 120% AMI, or a combination of both, depending on the type of financing that can be secured. These limits vary and are based on household size. You can find the city's income limits here.
"The developer's input will be essential in the master planning and design process, however, preliminary analysis of the site shows that it should be able to comfortably accommodate 150 to 200 units, including an acre set aside for early child education," he says. "Having the early child education component is what makes this site highly attractive for workforce housing."
Around the time the strategic housing plan was announced, Honolulu issued a request for qualifications for the redevelopment of four underutilized city-owned properties into affordable rental projects: 1615 Ala Wai Blvd., 436 Ena Road, 130 S. Beretania St.; and 1421 Pensacola St.
This summer, EAH Housing was chosen as the "preferred negotiating partner" for the redevelopment of 436 Ena Road and Centre Urban Real Estate as the "preferred negotiating partner" for the redevelopment of 1615 Ala Wai Blvd.
The city, which acquired 1615 Ala Wai through condemnation in January 2024, demolished the existing, dilapidated apartment building that once sat there.
In March, the city also issued an RFQ for the redevelopment of the Iwilei Center, which it acquired for $51.5 million in January 2024, and in June issued another RFQ seeking a partner to redevelop under-used city-owned land in Kapolei.
Most recently, the city issued an RFQ in August seeking a development partner for the redevelopment of a city-owned property in Kalihi into a transit-oriented, affordable housing community. Located across from the future Mokauea Skyline station, that 2.25-acre site includes the old Dee Lite Bakery building at 1930 Dillingham Blvd. and an adjacent parcel at 1907 Eluwene St.
"The administration is executing on the strategic plan that we rolled out in January this year," Auger told ASD. "Working with the Governor’s Office to amend the governor’s emergency proclamation for housing to allow the city to issue requests for qualifications in seeking development partners has been [a] game changer, allowing us to accelerate the overall procurement timeline. This was a novel approach that had not been done before in the city.
"The response from the development community to these RFQs has been overwhelmingly positive," he continued. "We are now negotiating development contracts with several highly qualified developers which instantly expands the City’s capacity to do more, faster. Our goal is to establish a development pipeline of [approximately] 2,500 affordable housing units by year-end, which is unprecedented."
Auger says that the next step in the housing effort will be to develop alternative forms for financing for these projects to accelerate delivery, which will be key to the city's overall success.
"Having a pipeline this substantial also allows us to work continue to build-out our platform and train and develop the next generation of city housing specialists. We are all working hard to make up for nearly 30 years of neglect, but we believe we are off to a really good start."
The full RFQ for the Royal Kunia project can be found here. Final submissions must be received by 1 p.m. Friday, Nov. 14.
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Stephanie Salmons can be reached at stephanie@alohastatedaily.com.
