PacificBusinessNews-article

June 9, 2014

PBN heads Windward to talk business in Kailua, Kaneohe

By Janis L. Magin

My husband grew up in Hawaii, and talks of the days when people rode horses along Kailua Beach in front of the old Castle estate and how his parents bought one of the first houses built in Aikahi Park, only four years after the modern Pali Highway connected Honolulu with Windward Oahu.

Today, Kailua is one of the most desirable places to live in Hawaii, where those modest houses built in the 1960s and 70s routinely sell for $1 million and designer showplaces on the beach can fetch $10 million or more.

It's also a desirable place to do business, especially for retailers — the number and variety of stores from Windward Mall in Kaneohe to Kailua Town — includingWhole Foods Market and, soon, Target — is reducing the reasons for residents to make the drive over the Koolau Mountains to shop in Honolulu. Those businesses, along with Kailua Beach, are also luring tourists from all over, but especially visitors from Japan, who arrive by the busload in the parking lot behind Macy's and Longs Drugs and roam the town on foot and on bicycles.

This Friday, PBN and local industry experts will take an in-depth look at the growing Windward business community during a the Windward Oahu Means Business event at the Mid Pacific Country Club in Lanikai. There's still time to join us — registration closes Monday night. Go here to sign up.

The panel discussion will feature Cynthia Manley, president of the Kailua Chamber of Commerce and public relations director for Le Jardin Academy; May Nishijima, vice president and Kailua branch manager for First Hawaiian Bank; Puna Nam, owner of Cinnamon's restaurant; Herb Lee Jr., executive director of the Pacific American Foundation; and Scott Carvill, owner and principal broker of Carvill Sotheby's International Realty.

Real estate is sure to be high on the list of topics for discussion on Friday, fromAlexander & Baldwin's $373 million purchase of the Kaneohe Ranch commercial real estate portfolio last year, which included a large portion of Kailua town, to the escalating prices of residential real estate on the Windward side.

The modest four-bedroom home my in-laws purchased in 1963 for $26,000, and sold for $160,000 in 1981, is today estimated to be worth more than $1 million, according to the real estate website Zillow. It's not too far off the market — the one house on their street that's currently on the market —an upgraded four-bedroom house built in 1964 — is listed for $1.15 million.