Kamehameha Schools is redeveloping another old collection of commercial buildings in Kahala to improve the area along with financial returns for the trust benefiting Native Hawaiian children.

The trust recently began demolishing several mostly one-story retail, office and school buildings mauka of Kahala Mall to make way for a new retail center anchored by a Foodland Farms grocery store.

The project called Ku‘ono Marketplace at Kahala will provide about 50,000 square feet of commercial space for about 20 tenants in a contiguous complex fronted by about 150 parking stalls and a gas station on the corner of Waialae Avenue and Hunakai Street where a Shell station once stood.

Construction is estimated to cost $11 million and be completed in early 2020.

Other tenants slated to move into the center include Hawaii Pacific Health, Daiichi Ramen, Wholesale Unlimited, Dry Bar, Great Clips and Kahala Nail &Lash.

Foodland Farms features more gourmet and organic products compared with typical Foodland Super Market stores, and will compete closely with a Whole Foods store that opened in 2008 at Kahala Mall and replaced a Star Markets store. A Times Supermarkets store also is in the area kitty corner from the Ku‘ono Marketplace site.

Kamehameha Schools said bringing new businesses to the site in better-designed spaces will better serve the community.

Most of the buildings being demolished were built in the early 1960s, and recent occupants included the Golden Duck Chinese restaurant, an urgent care clinic, a real estate office, a hair salon, a bank and a video store. There also was a Montessori elementary school and a Kamehameha Schools preschool on two of six separate parcels making up the 3-acre Ku‘ono Marketplace site.

Kamehameha Schools, the state’s largest private landowner, has a concentration of land zoned for commercial use in Kahala that it long ago leased to others for development. In recent years those land leases ended, and the trust has formulated plans to redevelop its reclaimed sites.

Last year the trust arranged for McDonald’s to redevelop a more than 50-year-old building the restaurant shared with a former bowling alley next to Kahala Mall. McDonald’s built itself a new restaurant plus about 10,000 square feet of additional building space for Kamehameha Schools to lease to about 10 other tenants.

The Ku‘ono Marketplace project has been in the works for more than a year. The trust shared its conceptual plan with the Waialae-Kahala Neighborhood Board in October 2017. Board Chairman Richard Turbin commended the trust for its plan, though board member Sylvia Himeda raised a concern about the loss of the schools, according to meeting minutes.

Hailama Farden, a Kamehameha Schools regional director, responded that the trust planned to relocate some of the lost classrooms to other sites and that new scholarships would be created from additional revenue generated by the new center.