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A California company has bought part of the undeveloped second phase of Oahu’s Royal Kunia subdivision to deliver a long-planned industrial business park.
Jupiter Holdings LLC acquired the 123-acre site from an affiliate of the nonprofit Harry and Jeannette Weinberg Foundation, both organizations announced Wednesday. A price was not disclosed.
The purchase follows a move last year by the local affiliate of Japan-based development firm Haseko to acquire a 211-acre portion of the Royal Kunia Phase II site with plans to build 1,850 homes there.
Royal Kunia initially was conceived in the 1980s by the prolific late local developer Herbert Horita as an extension of his Village Park subdivision. A first phase resulted in 1,929 homes and a golf course. But a second phase expected to break ground in 1994 with about as many homes, a second golf course, an industrial park, a 150-acre agricultural park for the state, a 10-acre public park and an elementary school was derailed due to financial challenges that led to bankruptcy of Horita’s Halekua Development Corp.
The Weinberg Foundation had helped Horita finance work on Royal Kunia and was a creditor in Halekua’s bankruptcy that retained ownership of some land in Royal Kunia’s planned second phase, including land it sold to Haseko last year for residential development.
Jupiter has been involved in Hawaii’s industrial real estate market for about 20 years, and most recently began building a 44-acre business park in the growing Ho‘opili community on the Ewa Plain earlier this year.