From the late 1950s into the 1970s, discount department stores were inescapable in Honolulu. Advertised abundantly in newspapers, and on radio and TV, everyone was definitely aware of Wigwam, Gibson’s, Holiday Mart, and GEM. Here’s the story of the last one.
GEM – which was its correct name, although nearly all of us knew it as “Gem’s” in local style – was an acronym for “Government Employees Mutual” (later changed to “Government Employees Mart”). Founded in Denver, Colorado in 1956, the business’s second location was Honolulu, which opened in July 1957. This was a large facility on Dillingham Boulevard in Kalihi which is familiar to many today as the place where we’ve gone to get, or renew, driver’s licenses, since 1997.
Only members could shop at GEM, and the requirements to join were puzzlingly restrictive: Government employees, military (including veterans), teachers, union members and clergy were the sole eligible persons. No one could even enter a store until their credentials were checked in an entry room and the door was buzzed open. Given that the majority of the population was prohibited from even setting foot inside a GEM store, the business received a surprising amount of publicity.
GEM expanded to its second retail location on Ward Avenue in Kaka‘ako in August 1962. This was an 80,000 square foot building on a 7-acre site that cost $1.3 million to construct. With 29 departments inside and a parking lot that could hold 700 vehicles, there was a lot to attract shoppers to this, the largest store in the GEM chain that by then had expanded to 16 outlets in a number of American cities. Nine thousand people were estimated to have attended the opening.
As time passed, GEM’s membership requirement was dropped. A store in Hilo came and went, two others opened on O‘ahu in Waipahu and Kaneohe and the last was located in Līhu‘e, Kaua‘i. The company merged with Parkview Drugs of Missouri in 1965 and changed its name to Parkview GEM. In 1979, the Hawai‘i stores were purchased by Seibu, a Japanese corporation.
As with many businesses that come to town in a flash of excitement, expand quickly and then settle down into just being part of the landscape, GEM gradually did the same. In December 1993 it was announced that three of the four remaining stores would close in two to three months, leaving only the Kaka‘ako location open, but this merely lasted till the following year. In late 1994 the former GEM became Sports Authority, which is how most people today will remember it. This lasted till the entire national Sports Authority chain was closed due to bankruptcy in 2016, which ended all eight of the company’s stores in the Hawaiian Islands.
This enabled multiple artists to use the now-empty building’s interior to show their works in the first Honolulu Biennial from March 8 to May 8, 2017. The Howard Hughes Corporation and Ward Village were major sponsors of this enjoyable cultural event, with art displayed throughout the entire district in addition to “The Hub” (the former GEM) which was then the largest space of what was called the Ward Gateway Center that housed various commercial tenants.
Finally came the ‘Ohana Hale Marketplace in October 2018. Based on the business model of a self-storage facility, the Marketplace contained 225 small individual vendor spaces, each available for rental. By December of that year, 162 were occupied. Over the next few years, tenants came and went, some moving out into the world into bigger commercial spaces. But by April 2022 the Marketplace ended in Kaka‘ako for – not surprisingly – the construction of a new and massive highrise condo on the site.
Don’t go looking for what was once GEM today — it’s completely vanished. In fact its former site is now bisected by a newly-opened street, to make the disappearance even more final.
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