The biggest private landowner in Kapalama has identified initial pieces of an envisioned long-term transformation for much of the area between Kalihi and Iwilei.

Kamehameha Schools has set its sights on what can be seen as first steps to make 104 acres of largely contiguous Kapalama real estate, today dominated by industrial uses, a bit more like Kakaako, with high-rise housing and new retail mixed with light industrial business operations.

Planning and development executives at the trust shared their outlook for the area they call Kapalama Kai at a recent Hawaii Society of Business Professionals meeting, where they said construction on an initial phase that includes three residential towers and a retail marketplace replacing industrial buildings along Kapalama Canal could begin in five to seven years.

This 16-acre first phase also includes land occupied by Kapalama Shopping Center, Bob’s Bar-B-Que and other retail and warehouse complexes along Dillingham Boulevard between Waiakamilo Road and the canal, where a couple more residential towers are envisioned to rise.

Hilarie Alomar, a Kamehameha Schools senior planning and development manager, explained that the trust’s goal is to maintain about 50% industrial use, including new development, on its Kapalama Kai lands integrated with 4,000 to 5,000 new homes, about 150,000 square feet of new retail space, 6 acres of open space and other uses.

Warren Miyake, president of the Hawaii Society of Business Professionals and a Kapalama area resident, said an influx of new housing will be a positive change in an aging community.

“It’s a good opportunity,” he said.

Before redevelopment begins, Kamehameha Schools anticipates converting the use of a former bowling alley site, which today is a used-car dealership at the corner of Dillingham Boulevard and Kohou Street, into something else as an interim upgrade within two to five years while planning proceeds for adjacent parcels.

This site, occupied by Excellent Motor Group, was once home to Classic Bowl, which opened in 1959. The bowling alley’s owner, a hunter and construction company owner named Watson Yoshimoto, later converted the establishment into a museum displaying around 360 taxidermied animals mainly from his own global hunting trips. Kamehameha Schools did not specify the intended reuse.

Alomar also said that Dillingham Plaza — a retail complex anchored by a Foodland super market, Office Depot and Savers thrift store — could be rehabilitated in the next two to five years as part of the trust’s renewal of Kapalama Kai.

Kamehameha Schools, a $12 billion charitable trust focused on educating Native Hawaiian children, began planning work for Kapalama Kai in 2017 followed by community outreach in 2018 and 2019.

The trust has previously shared its estimate to produce 4,000 to 5,000 homes in Kapalama, much of it affordable workforce housing, in more than a dozen towers largely concentrated along Kapalama Canal near a city rail station planned next to Honolulu Community College.

Now Kamehameha Schools sees three phases of redevelopment, though plans remain conceptual.

“We are early in the planning process,” Alomar said at the meeting.

Kamehameha Schools is the state’s largest private landowner with 364,000 acres predominantly zoned for agriculture or conservation use. The trust’s Hawaii commercial real estate totals about 15,000 acres, and the biggest contiguous swath of that is Kapalama Kai.

By comparison, the trust owns about 52 acres of largely contiguous land in Kakaako, including 29 acres being redeveloped under a master plan to produce upwards of 2,750 homes in 10 or so midrise and high-rise buildings.

Redevelopment under the Kakaako master plan began almost a decade ago with conversion of an office midrise into affordable rental apartments followed in 2015 by the 65,000-square-foot SALT retail complex. Today, about half the plan has been realized by the trust and development partners.

In Kapalama, Kamehameha Schools envisions redevelopment over at least 20 years.

A second phase mostly covers land along Kapalama Canal mauka of the first phase, and is on a planning horizon 10 years out, Alomar said.

The third phase covers three other parcels bordering the canal, including one leased to local developer Stanford Carr, who has previously shared plans to develop a 310-unit condo­minium tower and rental apartment complex called Kokea Center on the site pending land tenure negotiations.

The trust’s redevelopment plan for the area coincides with the city’s plan to have a third leg of rail service running between Kapalama and Ala Moana Center in 2031.

The city also has an $80 million plan to turn Kapalama Canal’s unkempt banks into a linear park featuring picnic pavilions and a pier overhanging the 81-year-old waterway, along with bike paths, two pedestrian bridges, raised promenades, landscaping, lighting and public art. Construction of this project, partly intended to improve flood control, is anticipated in phases with completion in 2026.