A developer had a site in Kalaeloa where cattle once roamed amid kiawe trees on a coral plain blessed Friday for a future $100 million Veterans Affairs clinic and a residential subdivision.

Hunt Cos. is scheduled to begin $40 million worth of work to improve road, electricity, water and sewer infrastructure to accommodate the two projects on 40 acres at the western end of what in recent history had been part of Barbers Point Naval Air Station.

Hawaiian historian and kahu Shad Kane conducted the blessing on a freshly cleared swath of dirt surrounded by dry knee-high grass and saplings of kiawe and haole koa.

Kane related some history of the site as being submerged by the ocean in ancient history, followed by cattle grazing on kiawe that rose up out of a dried-out coral plain makai of fertile sugar plantation fields, and then military housing at the base, which closed in 1999 and was followed by demolition of the homes that once stood on the barren site largely bordered by Franklin D. Roosevelt Avenue and Boxer Road.

Hunt acquired much of the former base from the Navy in 2009, and in 2013 produced a master plan to add 4,000 new homes, retail outlets, light-industrial businesses and recreational spaces to 540 acres it owns within the 3,700-acre former base property that includes an airport.

Steve Colon, president of the Hawaii development division for Texas-based Hunt, said the infrastructure work slated to begin next month will allow Hunt to break ground on the VA outpatient clinic by the end of this year, followed by a 389-home subdivision by local homebuilder Gentry Homes possibly early next year.

“It is a big day for us,” he said at the site. “Can you believe we’re here? Can you believe this is finally happening?”

The Gentry subdivision would be the first new homes built in Kalaeloa, though Hunt did convert an abandoned barracks building into 100 affordable rental apartments in 2015.

A conceptual long-term state master plan envisions 6,350 homes and a business district generating 7,000 new jobs for the area transferred from the Navy to Hunt and others.

Colon said the first new homes will represent a new phase for redevelopment by Hunt in Kalaeloa.

“This is an entirely new chapter for us,” he said, adding, “There’s still a lot of work to be done.”

The 88,675-square-foot VA clinic, funded by Congress and to be named after the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, is projected to open in 2024.

Gentry has projected that delivery of its initial homes could happen in 2023 if permitting and other work proceed without trouble.