Hawaii Pacific University has arranged the final step in consolidating its downtown Honolulu “campus” under a 2014 master plan to leave its longtime Windward Oahu base.

The largest private university in the state announced Tuesday that it plans to lease enough downtown office space — the rough equivalent of a 12-story building — to complete the shift over the next two years.

HPU committed to lease about 20 percent of the office complex Waterfront Plaza, long referred to as Restaurant Row, along with a smaller chunk of the Pioneer Plaza office tower for classroom space, labs, a library, executive offices and other school uses.

Under the plan, the last remaining operations of HPU’s Hawaii Loa campus in Kaneohe would be moved downtown, including the College of Natural and Computational Sciences and the College of Health and Society that would bring over 1,000 students and faculty to Waterfront Plaza.

HPU will lease about 100,000 square feet of space at Waterfront Plaza bordering downtown and Kakaako at 500 Ala Moana Blvd. The university also will lease about 22,000 square feet at Pioneer Plaza about nine blocks Ewa at 900 Fort Street Mall.

Many of the relocated operations will be what’s left at HPU’s windward campus, though other pieces including the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Professional Studies are being moved from other downtown buildings leased by the university at Kukui Plaza, on Bishop Street and the mauka end of Fort Street Mall.

John Gotanda, HPU president, said in a statement that the moves will give the university a more centralized “campus” downtown.

“Securing new facilities at Waterfront Plaza and Pioneer Plaza is a monumental step in fulfilling HPU’s vision of a world-class urban campus,” he said.

HPU anticipates starting the moves as early as July 2019 and completing them by May 2020.

The university has been working on a master plan to consolidate itself downtown for several years.

A big early step was made when HPU bought the buildings at the mostly vacant Aloha Tower Marketplace for around $14 million in 2012 and then spent another roughly $40 million converting shop space into classrooms, dorms and other facilities. Some restaurants, including Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant, also remained at what was originally developed as a waterfront festival marketplace on state-owned land.

HPU created a master plan focused on downtown and anchored at Aloha Tower in 2014. Two years later it sold its 132-acre Hawaii Loa campus to Castle Medical Center with an agreement for the university to stay as a tenant for up to five years, which would give the university time to find enough space downtown to move.

The university said the new lease deals, brokered by commercial real estate firm Colliers International, will make the nonprofit school the largest private occupant of real estate in Honolulu’s central business district with use of 350,000 square feet of space.

Larry Taff, president of Waterfront Plaza owner Pacific Office Properties Trust Inc., said in a statement that the complex of seven low-rise office buildings mixed with restaurants, retail shops and an open-air bar offers a campus-like environment and will raise occupancy up to almost 100 percent.

At Pioneer Plaza, HPU already leases about 17,000 square feet for its College of Business and classrooms. Steve Metter, CEO and principal of Pioneer Plaza owner MW Group Ltd., said in a statement that HPU students and faculty are diversifying and adding to the economic activity downtown.

“As one of the largest leaseholders in downtown, HPU draws thousands of students and faculty members into the neighborhood,” he said.

HPU was established in 1965 and has an enrollment of about 5,000 students. Through much of its history, it primarily operated out of rented office space downtown. The university acquired its Kaneohe campus in 1992 through a merger with Hawaii Loa College.