A developer plans to start building a $650 million luxury hotel and condominium tower across from the Hawai‘i Convention Center next year following a three-year delay influenced by the coronavirus pandemic.
Mana‘olana Partners announced last week that work on its 37-story project featuring 99 residential condos and 125 hotel units under the Hong Kong-based Mandarin Oriental hotel brand will resume this month with preparation of an environmental site assessment followed by construction likely to begin after March and finish in 2025.
The construction timetable follows a restart this past March selling condo units in the project where prices range from $3.6 million to $21.3 million.
“This is an exciting milestone to resume development of this incredibly unique property and get to work,” Rob Centra, Mana‘olana senior vice president of design and construction management, said in a statement.
Condo unit sales in the planned tower initially began in late 2019, and construction was slated to begin soon after. But the emergence of COVID-19 in early 2020 stalled the work.
Three years ago, Mana‘olana had priced units from $3.5 million to $35 million, representing an attempt to break a record price for a residential condo on Oahu.
Prior to that, the highest residential condo sale on the island was $23.5 million paid in 2018 for a 6,273-square-foot Park Lane Ala Moana penthouse completed on the makai edge of Ala Moana Center in 2017.
At least one other developer, Howard Hughes Corp., has tried but failed to sell new penthouse units in Honolulu for over $30 million. Hughes Corp. in 2016 offered a 10,000- square-foot unit in its then-new Waiea tower at Ward Village in Kakaako for $36 million, and a second one at $35 million that could instead be bought with the other one for $71 million, but those listings were withdrawn in 2019.
As part of relaunching the sales program for The Residences at Mandarin Oriental Honolulu, Mana‘olana retained real estate consulting firm Harold X Clarke Advisors last year.
The firm, founded last year by Hawaii real estate broker Harold Clarke, who established Luxury Big Island, describes itself as focusing on the world’s top 0.001% of “ultra-high-net-worth” buyers and investors.
Clarke said in a statement that local and international buyers are responding “very positively” to the project’s location and sophisticated luxury brand.
Mana‘olana officials declined to disclose how many sales contracts have been signed since March, but said one of three penthouses with up to 6,000 square feet of living area was sold recently.
In sales materials, Mana‘olana promotes condos in the project as offering “bespoke hotel living” to buyers in the tower where planned amenities include an exhibition kitchen run by Mandarin Oriental staff, concierge and valet service, a private theater with a bar, a state-of-the-art golf simulator, a video gaming room, a karaoke lounge and a Peloton studio.
Restaurants led by Michelin-level chefs, a lavish spa, pool, gardens and public plazas are part of the planned tower as well.
In a report filed with the Hawaii Real Estate Commission, Mana‘olana indicated that it intends to use buyer deposits to help fund development of the tower, which was previously known as Mana‘olana Place.
Mana‘olana obtained city zoning approval in 2016 to build the tower at the corner of Kapiolani Boulevard and Atkinson Drive just outside Waikiki where a 7-Eleven convenience store and several restaurants, bars and other businesses had long been.
The development firm also planned a second hotel and condo tower in 2016 nearby on Kapiolani on the site of a five-story office building once anchored by Heald College next to a now-closed flagship Walgreens store mauka of Ala Moana Center, but that project has not moved ahead.
