Market City Shopping Center at 2919 Kapiolani Blvd. is marking its 65th anniversary, and you, oh reader and Facebook user, could be the one getting the present.
It’s not just the KUMU-FM 94.7 radio promotion, free cake, popcorn, magician tricks, clown-clowning and balloons for all from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, it’s the trip for two to Las Vegas you could win.
Those who are on Facebook, or who join the social network (it’s free), can enter the Vegas trip drawing by "liking" the Market City Facebook page, clicking on the Trivia tab and answering the five questions.
"We’re really excited about that," said Sandra Au Fong, senior vice president of Market City Ltd., which established the center by pooling the life savings of three local families to buy the 3.5-acre vegetable patch where the center now sits, back in 1946.
The vegetable patch also bore a large monkeypod tree, which still stands on the property at Kapiolani Boulevard and Harding Avenue.
Well before statehood "in 1948, we became a shopping center. The first modern shopping center and home to the first Foodland Super Market," she said.
Foodland initially was on the Ewa side of the property. The old Wiki Wiki Burger was another charter tenant, opening for business under the sprawling tree.
Old-timers will remember lumber and home improvement store Timber Town, which opened at Market City in the 1970s, and that the center built a new building for Foodland to move into, which opened in 1981.
The old Foodland space was subdivided and welcomed many new tenants including Fun Factory and Blockbuster, the center’s first national retail tenant.
With 26 tenants the center is 98 percent leased. "We don’t want to lease it just to get it leased. I just decided to wait for the right tenant," said Fong.
Ben Franklin Crafts became the anchor tenant downstairs in 2000. "They’re wonderful for crafts," she said. "They have a huge selection of things."
Also among the tenants are many mom-and-pop stores. "We’re so supportive of our tenants because if they do well then we do well," she said.
"We are very happy to have been serving the community for 65 years," she said. "Our customers mean a lot to us. … We try to do a lot to give back to the community."
The Market City Foundation was formed in 1993 to support community organizations and educational scholarships for East Honolulu students. One scholarship recipient, now working in marketing at Oceanic Time Warner Cable, met Fong’s assistant at church, and they got to talking. The recipient wanted to again meet Sandra Au Fong and her husband, Marvin, Market City president, to thank them for the difference they made in her life. "That makes us feel very good," Sandra said.
The scholarships were put on hiatus following the economic downturn, "but we’re going to pick it up again next year," she said.
Sandra, who earned her M.B.A. at the Shidler College of Business at UH-Manoa, and husband Marvin, an attorney, mark 38 years of marriage in July.
Her oldest son, Nathan, is a vice president with Colliers Monroe and Friedlander, while her younger son, Tim, is a vice president with Market City. "We’re in real estate and finance, and our children followed us," she said.
The entry deadline for the Vegas trip giveaway, conducted in partnership with Vacations Hawaii, is 9 p.m. April 20, and the winner will be announced and notified April 22.
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On the Net:
» marketcityhawaii.com
