For nearly four decades, the Honolulu Club was more than a gym. It was a routine, a meeting place, and for many, a second home.
The Honolulu Club opened in 1980 across from the Neal Blaisdell Center, with a major focus on racquetball. After a 2012 bankruptcy and major reinvestments in 2014, the renovated club boasted a lounge, a 32-foot pool, steam rooms and saunas, hot tubs, cold plunges, personal training, and dozens of classes each week.
Members came for training sessions or group classes, but often lingered long after their workouts, talking story in the lounge and around the pool. The club quickly developed a reputation for networking and a camaraderie that extended far beyond its walls.
However, after temporary shutdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by renewed restrictions and declining membership, the club's owners made the difficult decision to permanently close. In its farewell message, the club emphasized that it had always been about more than fitness — it was about ‘ohana.
Another popular hangout in the building was T.G.I. Friday’s. People who worked in the building and in the surrounding area made the restaurant their regular lunch spot for years. Concertgoers and event attendees often stopped by for a meal before and after their events at the Blaisdell Center. Like the Honolulu Club, regulars enjoyed the camaraderie and the family-style atmosphere. With its sudden closure in 2007, patrons and staff were shocked to be left uninformed.
Other businesses housed within the structure included physicians’ offices, a hair salon, real estate firms, and investment and insurance advisors. Although all of these establishments are gone now, people who have worked in or visited the building often seem to describe the same uneasy moments.
Tales of furniture that refused to stay where it was left, doors that moved without wind, and persistent, uneasy feelings in certain areas of the building and the parking garage are examples of similar accounts that connected the various businesses. Some club members have described shadows glimpsed from the periphery or fully formed apparitions roaming the steam room and the weight room.
What makes these stories hard to dismiss is not just who experienced them, but where the building stands. A land survey conducted during recent construction stated that they found no visible archaeological remains during surface inspection. Yet even in its careful, technical language, the report leaves important questions open. Background research indicates that this stretch of King Street followed a major Hawaiian trail that was in use for centuries before Western contact, suggesting that traditional cultural deposits in the area cannot be ruled out. More pointedly, the survey acknowledges the possibility that burials associated with the Roman Catholic Cemetery next door may extend beyond its present boundaries and into the area of the concrete building. A walk through the cemetery shows marked graves just inches away from the building’s west-facing wall.
The building’s basement, which spans the entire footprint, is nearly nine feet below street level. The report ultimately concludes that this makes the survival of intact burials or subsurface cultural deposits unlikely. But unlikely is not the same as impossible. The report still doesn’t actually answer the question that keeps surfacing whenever unexplained activity is discussed: Is the building partially built over graves?
Today, after a complete renovation, the building has entered a new chapter as the Liliʻuokalani Center, a community hub supporting Native Hawaiian youth in culture, creativity, technology, and exploration.
On my visit there, I met someone who works at the new facility. She gave me a thorough tour of the state-of-the-art building, and then she said, “There is one place I want to take you. You tell me what you think.”
We took the elevator to the basement, and when the double doors opened, I felt it immediately.
“Burials?” I asked.
Nodding, my friend pointed to a corner and said, “During construction, they uncovered iwi. That’s where they put them.”
“Were they able to identify the remains?” I asked.
This person shrugged and left it at that.
But as I left the building, I saw a thick mist floating from the main doors through the intersection. It moved as if it had an intended destination. Vehicles swerved a bit or slowed down, so I know I wasn’t the only witness. Despite the minor chaos, the mist drifted over to Thomas Square, where it dissolved into nothing.
Is this part of the reason people think the building is haunted? Was it a previous resident from the building? Or perhaps a traveler from ancient days following the old trail?
Whatever it was, the imprint of the past remains on the newly renovated building, but we’ll find out soon enough whether its spirits remain as well.
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