At last, it’s time to turn the long-promised rehabilitation of Varona Village into a prime opportunity.
What for decades has been a deterioriating vestige of Hawaii’s plantation history holds potential to finally do right by the village’s longtime residents and to provide needed homes for workforce families of today.
By today’s mindset, a company or entity physically caring for workers long after employment has ended is anachronistic — embodiment of a long-ago plantation mentality. But, commitments were made over the decades — first by the plantation company and then by the city — to provide these former plantation workers lifelong affordable housing at Varona Village. Such a foundational promise should be kept to the 43 families remaining in the 90-lot area.
The 26-acre Varona Village is listed on Hawaii’s Register of Historic Places, one of eight communities built between 1900 and the 1950s for Ewa Plantation Co. workers and their families. When the plantation’s successor, Oahu Sugar, closed in 1995, the city bought Varona and nearby Tenney and Renton villages. While the other villages have been mostly renovated and redeveloped with housing, Varona was left behind, due largely to funding shortages and a city government scandal that led to elimination of its housing department.
For decades, even as Varona’s houses deteriorated, most residents staunchly stayed, paying cheap rents — some as low as $55 monthly — and living humbly in the tight but dilapidated community. And waiting for promises to be fulfilled.
“We’ve been waiting for it (redevelopment) for a long time. We’ve been forgotten because things happened,” said Leda Barbieto, 79, a resident whose husband worked as a plantation electrician. “This could be the final step. I’m just wishing for it.”
“This” is the city’s recent announcement that it would issue a request for proposals by month’s end for private redevelopment of Varona, which would include assurances that housing options are affordable. The developer would assume all site and infrastructure improvements, and because Varona is on the historic register, the project would need to adhere to preservation standards.
The property’s assessed value is about $1.6 million — which would seem to provide a lot of upside potential for the right developer, given that vacant lots could be developed with homes at up to market-rate prices.
The right developer would need to have appreciation for the area’s unique place in Hawaii history, since all homes would need to be in keeping with Varona’s vintage character: single-family dwellings only and no commercial buildings.
But again, this is a 90-lot parcel. Even after meeting the requirement to enable former plantation workers and their families to affordably buy or otherwise reside at Varona, there still remain nearly 50 lots for new homes — needed housing supply for Hawaii’s high demand.
Varona Village may have frozen in time, but all around it, much has cropped up. Housing projects have gentrified its onetime sister plantation villages of Tenney and Renton. The new Ka Makana Alii shopping center is bustling down the street. A public transit hub nearby should bring ever more conveniences once rail transit comes online.
The historic nature of laid-back Varona is unique. Promises made to its residents of yesteryear should be honored, but the promise it holds to fulfill the housing needs of dozens more working families is no less significant.
