Doug Johnstone has led Ward Village's continued growth as president of developer Howard Hughes' Hawai‘i region, but a new promotion has him taking the national development stage.
While Johnstone will remain rooted in the Islands, continuing in the president role he's held since 2020, he also was recently named head of national development for Howard Hughes Communities.
"I've got the exciting position of taking a lot of what we've learned here, and ability to blend together team members and stakeholders in the different disciplines, and really try to move forward projects and business plans that can be successful and complementary to the surrounding community," he told Aloha State Daily during an interview at his Ward Village office. "What I do here, and also in these other markets now, is really try to assemble good, collaborative team members that can have the discipline that goes into underwriting, due diligence, creating the investment opportunity; working with leasing, sales, marketing, construction; and really trying to choreograph how to move these efforts forward and provide the financial analysis, the corporate reporting, the coordination that needs to happen to attract investment and ultimately move things forward and execute."
There's still a "tremendous amount of activity" happening in Honolulu with Ward Village, he says: four active projects under construction, a park underway, infrastructure work progressing, "so in Honolulu, a lot of emphasis on the execution of what we've been teeing up in recent years."
"In the post-Covid time period, a lot of what you're seeing underway now is from that continued planning and discipline and moving forward in the wake of volatility," he says. "In the last year or so, we've started to put some building blocks in place of how to move some higher-density for-sale residential projects forward in some of our other markets."
Those efforts were focused in areas like Summerlin, outside of Las Vegas and The Woodlands outside of Houston, Johnstone says.
Howard Hughes Communities is the real estate platform of Howard Hughes Holdings Inc.; in addition to Ward Village, Summerlin and The Woodlands, its other assets include Bridgeland and The Woodlands Hills in the Houston area, Teravalis in greater Phoenix, and Merriweather District in Columbia, Maryland.
Johnstone isn't joking; there's plenty happening in Ward Village, which sold out its first eight mixed-use residential towers: Waiea, Anaha, Ae‘o, Ke Kilohana, ‘A‘ali‘i, Kō‘ula, Victoria Place and Ulana Ward Village.
New residential buildings in development or under construction include Kalae, The Launiu Ward Village, Melia Ward Village and ‘Ilima Ward Village.
Ulana Ward Village opened in November 2025 and The Park Ward Village opened in June.
Also in the past 18 months or so:
- The makai phase of Victoria Ward Park opened in February 2025, and the mauka side of the park opened a year later in February 2026.
- A pedestrian bridge across Ala Moana Boulevard, connecting Kaka‘ako and Victoria Ward Park Makai to Ala Moana Beach Park and Kewalo Basin, opened in May 2025.
- Ka La‘i o Kukuluāe‘o Park opened in September of last year.
- The Launiu, Ward Village’s 11th residential tower, broke ground in October 2025.
- Sales for Mahana, another planned tower, launched this summer.
Meanwhile, Ward Centre, which opened in 1982 and served the community for more than four decades, officially closed its doors to the public on June 30.
The ongoing demolition of the retail center will clear the way for Melia Ward Village and ‘Ilima Ward Village, which are planned for the site.
The developer broke ground on Melia and ‘Ilima late last month.
Ward Village marked a record year in 2025, with momentum driven by the launch of Melia Ward Village and ‘Ilima Ward Village earlier in the year.
In Hawai‘i last year, Howard Hughes contracted to sell 287 condos, which accounted for roughly $1.6 billion in future revenue, according to a fourth-quarter earnings report from Howard Hughes Holdings published earlier this year. Of those pre-sales, 220 units were contracted at Melia and ‘Ilima.
What lessons will Johnstone take with him from Ward Village into his new role?
"What we've really learned over time is the need to be both pioneering and practical in balancing those two things when it comes to dynamic design, but also having fundamentals that are needed to ultimately have something that is viable and can move forward," he told ASD. "Then also, a lot of what development entails is making thoughtful investments that ultimately have an incredible amount of operational intensity to them. A lot of it is establishing a game plan or a business plan on paper, but then you might spend the next six or seven years bringing that to fruition, and you can encounter both micro and macro volatility in the process, or events that you could never predict in the years prior."
But, Johnstone says, a lot of what really dictates the outcomes is how well you can navigate that as a team.
"One of the benefits of what we do at Howard Hughes is being able to take a bit more of a longer-term approach and be able to weather through some of those ups and downs, but also take the multi-year or multi-decade perspective of how what we're doing today is going to fit into a broader initiative for that overall market or masterplan."
Johnstone says the new role "really complements and expands a bit of what my team here has been doing over the last 14 years."
"We've got some great colleagues that have matured over time and are taking on more and more responsibility, and a number of them are working together on some of the efforts in Summerlin and The Woodlands and Bridgeland, as an example," he explains. "Really, it's trying to deploy some of these best practices of how we've been able to put forth a huge amount of progress in Ward Village. It's an exciting place to be to touch different markets and product types, but ultimately it's a lot of the same process and you're trying to scale it and empower team members and provide a level of consistency."
In the near-term, Johnstone says his goal is to get "everybody aligned to have that common north star of where you're going."
Johnstone, who born and raised in Honolulu, attended Punahou School and Stanford University. He joined the Ward Village team in 2012 and was named president of the Hawai‘i Region in early 2020.
As for the new position, he says it's inspiring for himself, the team and "hopefully a lot of folks progressing their careers here in Hawai‘i."
"We're really proud of the team and platform we've built here over the last 14, 15 years, both internally and externally, the careers that have grown up along with what we've been doing in Ward Village — from our own colleagues, but also on the contractor side, engineers, architects, attorneys. A lot of us have really matured with this overall master plan and to be able to take some of that and try to have an impact with more people, more properties and communities, it's a great case study of what we could do here in Hawai‘i. Even though you're in the middle of the Pacific, a lot of new flexibility and opportunities are created by the world getting flatter, technology improving, a little bit more time on airplanes, but it's hopefully an inspiring thing for a lot of people that are working in the industry."
Being able to build and grow a career in Hawai‘i is "really fulfilling," Johnstone says.
While there are challenges to accomplish that, "I think that's something for a lot of early-stage career folks and a lot of accomplished students that come out of here to see it as a path that is possible with a huge amount of hard work, probably some luck in the process, but I think there's a level of optimism that hopefully we can express to folks that are trying to make it."
Stephanie Salmons can be reached at stephanie@alohastatedaily.com.
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