State officials are trying for the third time in 10 years to have a developer produce affordable housing on public land in Kakaako next to historic Mother Waldron Park.

The move follows two different state agencies selecting development plans for the site, known as 690 Pohukaina, and then terminating agreements after trouble with the state Department of Education having a school be part of the project.

This time, a smaller piece of the site is being offered up under a 75-year lease for high-rise affordable housing to developers under a competitive bidding process. However, a winning bidder might have to provide parking for a public school that DOE could possibly develop one day on adjacent land being reserved for such use.

The Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corp., a state agency that helps produce affordable housing, issued a request for proposals in November.

Bids are due March 15.

To help interest developers and reduce risk, HHFDC could make $2 million available to a winning bidder as a low-interest loan that would be forgiven if the project is determined to be unfeasible due to factors beyond the control of the selected developer as determined by either the developer or HHFDC.

“This has been long awaited,” Denise Iseri-Matsubara, HHFDC’s executive director, said at an October board meeting at which the new initiative was approved.

Two versions of an earlier project had been pursued since 2012, though state efforts to redevelop the 690 Pohukaina site and a neighboring parcel date back at least 30 years.

In 1992 the Hawaii Community Development Authority, a state agency charged with spurring redevelopment in Kakaako, issued a request for affordable-housing proposals from developers after then-Gov. John Waihee challenged homebuilders to deliver affordable rental apartments on the site where a school once existed a century ago.

HCDA accepted a plan led by a subsidiary of Korean construction firm Daewoo Corp. for 600 rental apartments in twin towers where Native Hawaiians would receive a preference to occupy half the units. But a slowing Hawaii economy derailed Daewoo’s project.

In 1997 the Legislature gave HCDA $250,000 to update a vision for the site and solicit development proposals for an elementary school along with 100 to 150 residential units. Yet HCDA never sought bids after completing a master plan in 1999.

HHFDC in 2006 sought bids for affordable housing on part of the larger site, and a year later selected a plan from Stanford Carr Development, which overcame lengthy financing difficulties and delivered the 204-unit rental building Halekauwila Place in 2014.

Shortly before Carr’s project was just getting started with construction, then-Gov. Neil Abercrombie touted a plan in 2011 to raise the building height limit on the 690 Pohukaina site to 650 feet from 400 feet to allow what would be the tallest building in Hawaii on the remaining land next to Mother Waldron Park as a way to reduce urban sprawl and affordable-housing demand.

Two developers responded to an HCDA request for proposals to fulfill Abercrombie’s supertower initiative despite heavy community pushback over the proposed height-limit increase.

HCDA picked Ohio-based Forest City Enterprises to build a pair of towers conforming to the existing height limit and containing 804 apartments with mostly high-moderate rents.

Forest City anticipated breaking ground in 2014, but negotiating a development agreement got bogged down in part because of a push from DOE to have an elementary school in the project because of an expectation that much ongoing high-rise housing development in Kakaako would increase the need for schools in the area.

To accommodate DOE, Forest City revised its plan to one tower with 400 residences next to a midrise school. Such a change, however, departed too much from what HCDA sought via competitive bids, so the deal with Forest City was called off.

HHFDC then stepped in for HCDA to salvage the plan, expressing an intent in 2016 to have a firm formed by Hawaii executives of Forest City, Alaka‘i Development, build 690 Pohukaina with 390 apartments featuring moderate rents along with a 10-story elementary school serving 750 students.

The school, to be paid for by DOE, represented a prototype for “vertical” urban schools in Honolulu and an amenity for some future area residents.

“Just imagine a family living in the Kakaako area, and particularly in our future rental community, who will be able to drop their kids off at school and walk or bike to work in the nearby urban core,” Alaka‘i principal Jon Wallenstrom said in a statement at the time. “It will provide the people of Honolulu with a marvelous lifestyle and will help address public school expansion needs in an area undergoing change.”

DOE estimated the school’s cost at $40 million, and had received an initial $6 million from the Legislature in 2015 that had increased to $23 million by 2019 to cover design work and some construction.

Then difficulty with funding emerged in 2020 when the estimated cost to build the school rose to $63 million and lawmakers rejected a DOE request for an additional $20 million, claiming that the money wasn’t needed because construction wasn’t close to beginning.

Last year HHFDC terminated the plan with Alaka‘i and DOE because DOE had only $23 million for the school.

The new request for bids is envisioned by HHFDC to produce more than one competing plan for possibly 400 to 600 homes despite the smaller land area available.

And maybe, one day, a school will be built next door.

“Although there is no concrete plan in place,” HHFDC noted in a recent report, “DOE will continue to explore the first-of-its-kind vertical school facility.”