Visitors to the Hawai‘i Convention Center had to walk past trash bins placed to collect the rain when a powerful storm buffeted the Hawaiian Islands earlier this month, adding to the hundreds of thousands in flood-related damage that the facility has been grappling with over the past couple of years.

For years water has been penetrating the center’s rooftop terrace deck, causing water intrusion into other parts of the building where there are now cracks, rust and calcium leaching from the concrete. But progress has been mired by a series of ongoing studies — including two in the current pipeline — that have made lawmakers reluctant to significantly invest in the aging building before its future plans are determined.

Hawai‘i Convention Center General Manager Teri Orton told the Hawaii Tourism Authority on Friday that leaking from the center’s rooftop terrace and from planters along the center’s grand staircase need to be addressed promptly. Since November 2021, she said, the center already has spent about $300,000 to repair damage from two rain events, and is currently evaluating how much it will cost to fix damage from last week’s storm.

“We are still drying out the center to prevent mold,” she said.

Orton said a January 2022 leak, which came on the heels of one in November 2021, took 10 of the center’s meeting rooms out of inventory just before the arrival of the International Dairy Queen conference. She said the cost to make repairs after storms is going up, with each now costing about $250,000 to $300,000. Reputational damage to the center and future booking losses are mounting, too, Orton said.

Last week’s storm was less disruptive to center operations than others as there were fewer full days of rain and the center was hosting volleyball and basketball tournaments rather than large conferences, she said. But Orton added, “It’s embarrassing that (center occupants) have to walk around trash bins that are littered around our lobby area and throughout other common space in our building.”

HTA asked state lawmakers last session for $54 million to repair the rooftop deck, which would include fixing two stairways and repairing the deck by adding pedestrian pavers and possibly a concrete overlay to increase loading capacity and resist future cracking. HTA also asked for $10 million to install shades to cover 50% of the rooftop terrace. The shades would have allowed the center more utilization of the popular deck by cooling the space as well as eliminating the need for tents and providing more options for clients in inclement weather.

Instead, state legislators gave the center $15 million to remove the rooftop terrace plastic square flooring and planters and paint on a barrier. Lawmakers favored the temporary repair to end the current cycle of costly outlays for Band-Aid fixes after major rain events.

HTA Acting Chief Administrative Officer Marc Togashi told the HTA board Thursday that the $15 million has not been released to HTA, which has “recently submitted paperwork requesting the release of those funds.”

Orton said the center is expected to make a procurement award next week for the temporary fix. If the funding is released soon, Orton anticipates that planning and permitting would take place in 2023 and that repair and construction could begin in 2024.

However, Orton asked the HTA board Thursday to consider making another request to lawmakers for the $64 million. She favors switching back to the permanent fix if the Legislature would give its approval. Orton said the problem with the temporary repair is that it would hold up for only about two to five years and would prevent use of the popular rooftop terrace deck, which nearly all groups want to book.

Orton said the temporary repair would significantly disrupt center operations, so she would prefer a more permanent solution, which would minimize the need for further repairs and the corresponding drop in business that they would bring.

She said the center returns hundreds of millions in transient accommodations tax to the state and helps bolster the visitor industry, which is still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Orton said, the center’s role as an emergency shelter and in supporting the state and the community during the COVID-19 pandemic are perhaps even better reasons to shore up the state asset.

“You see the Aloha Stadium. Why would you want to continue that same strategy with another one of your large assets?” Orton said. “My job is to manage the state’s asset and tell them what they should do. Whether they do it or not is up to them. The building needs repair — that’s the bottom line.”

HTA board Chair George Kam told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Thursday that he did not know whether HTA would make another $64 million rooftop request. Kam said legislators ultimately wanted to see the rooftop terrace deck and other repairs addressed as part of a broader convention center retooling, which could be addressed as part of two newly funded studies.

Senate Bill 3334, which passed last session, outlined greater plans for the Hawai‘i Convention Center, which opened in 1998, the same year the Hawaii Tourism Authority was founded. Through that bill, legislators appropriated $500,000 to DBEDT to take a comprehensive look at the center’s future, which could consider creating a Hawai‘i Convention Center district plan. That plan would include adding a hotel to the convention center or developing surrounding tie-ins through real estate, perhaps even through privatization or public-private partnerships.

HTA board member David Arakawa asked Togashi during HTA’s Thursday meeting for an update on the $500,000 study.

Togashi told Arakawa that the $500,000 appropriation was made to the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism rather than HTA, so he “would not be able to comment with absolute accuracy on the status.”

Togashi said HTA has contracted for its own update of the Hawaii Convention Futures Study. Togashi said the contractor has begun stakeholder interviews for that study, which is underway.

According to state procurement records, HTA selected North Star Research Corp. during the summer for a $50,000 award to complete the Market Futures Study of the Hawai‘i Convention Center, which would serve as an update to an April 2020 study.

The award posting said that the “updated report will specifically address the hotel market analysis, the demand and financial projections for the Hawai‘i Convention Center (HCC), the HCC district analysis, and operational projections under alternative operating scenarios for the HCC.”

Togashi told the HTA board, “That scope of work includes assessing the convention center, including a scenario where a hotel is built at the convention center. It also includes taking a look at the possibility of development in the surrounding neighborhood.”

Togashi said he had informed former DBEDT Director Mike McCartney about HTA’s convention center study.

“He said he would look into whether he would be able to leverage that work and incorporate it into what DBEDT was intending to do,” he said.

McCartney recently made headlines with a controversial eleventh-hour decision on Dec. 5, the last day of his term, to rescind the award for the U.S. tourism contract, which has prompted the need for HTA to seek a third procurement. He also was in the news in October when he claimed DBEDT was now in charge of redeveloping Aloha Stadium following more than a decade of work by the Stadium Authority, private consultants, state lawmakers and the state Department of Accounting and General Services.

Togashi said he has had a preliminary discussion about the convention center studies with new DBEDT Director Chris Sadayasu, who is on the list of stakeholders to be interviewed for HTA’s convention center study.

Arakawa expressed concern at the HTA board meeting that $500,000 was a big amount, and asked, “Will the HTA board have any policy input into that $500,000 contract?”

Arawaka later told the Star-Advertiser that he asked the question because “it’s important for the board and the public to know what that study is about and for the convention center to work together on it.”

Kam told Arakawa that Sadayasu would determine HTA’s role in that process.

Kam said the challenge in making a new request for a permanent rooftop repair is “there’s a $500,000 study from DBEDT that’s what’s the future of the convention center. What you don’t want to do is spend all the money and then build a hotel right where you just built a brand-new roof.”

Kam said legislators have told HTA to temporarily fix the rooftop for $15 million and from there finish the study, and then “see, OK, if we need to spend, do, but what is the future of the convention center?”

Wide-ranging visions of the center’s future and study after expensive study have kept the center from promptly addressing the repairs for at least the past 15 years.

There is talk at the Capitol and in the visitor industry that lawmakers are waiting because they hope these latest studies will lead to opportunities for the state to sell the convention center or at least find a public-private partner to help transform it. The state potentially could sweeten the deal by condemning lands around the center for related redevelopment. One of the studies could explore development of a 300- to 600-room hotel, likely affixed to the convention center’s Kalakaua Avenue side.

Convention center officials requested about $27 million from the Legislature as far back as 2017 to fix the rooftop deck, which was a problem even before the facility opened. However, legislators did not approve the improvements, which consultant Allana Buick &Bers Inc. said in 2012 were needed by 2017.

Part of the reason is that the uncertainty of plans to establish a Center for Hawaiian Music and Dance on the center’s rooftop put everything in limbo for at least 15 years. In 2007, state lawmakers appropriated $80,000 for a feasibility study for the Hawaiian center. In 2013 the Legislature began directing HTA to set aside $1 million annually to fund operations at the future Hawaiian center, for which a budget was never set.

In 2014, when McCartney was the head of HTA rather than of DBEDT, HTA awarded a contract for a business plan and design study to WCIT Architecture and subcontractor DTL Hawaii for more than 10 times what the Legislature had allocated.

HTA eventually paid more than $800,000 to WCIT Architecture and its subcontractors for consulting work to establish a Center for Hawaiian Music and Dance on the convention center’s rooftop, only to find out that the state couldn’t afford the $98 million it would cost to build, and the damaged roof does not have the infrastructure to support it anyway.

State lawmakers finally agreed in 2019 to scrap the convention center as the location for the Center for Hawaiian Music and Dance. In 2020, HTA set aside another $250,000 to explore turning the center into a virtual concept that would make Hawaiian music, dance, related histories and cultural storytelling available to the world online.

Orton said in addition to the $64 million needed for the rooftop, the center also has about $80 million in other deferred maintenance. She said the convention center established a six-year plan and began tackling the backlog prior to the pandemic, but it currently has only $37 million available to make these other repairs.

“We are prioritizing the leaks,” she said.

Compounding the convention center’s struggles to address deferred maintenance was the passage in 2021 of House Bill 862, which led to changes in how the state funds HTA and has prevented the center from using its enterprise special fund, which could supplement its current budget.

HTA President and CEO John De Fries said that “the state budget approved in the 2021 legislative session did not include an expenditure ceiling for the Convention Center Enterprise Special Fund, suspending our ability to utilize the $29 million in that fund for critical repairs to the Hawai‘i Convention Center.”

“We will work with the Legislature this session to reinstate the expenditure ceiling, which will enable us to reinvest in this important state facility that serves visitors and kamaaina alike.”