A Vast Emptiness

You'll find vacant retail space in just about any market; of course, some places are much worse than others.  There was a time (back around 1990, according to our research) that vacant retail space in Waikiki was more precious than diamonds.  Today, it's hardly the same; though things are coming back, the 2008 recession took its toll here as it did elsewhere.

But our purpose in today's column isn't really to provide a numerical analysis of available square feet and trends. Instead, we want to do a little show and tell and talk about what we see as the impact of vacant buildings and storefronts. Frankly, we don't see anything like a "glut" of shuttered shops, and that's a good thing; but some of what we see, equally frankly, is unattractive and potentially harmful to the tourism upon which we depend. And that's not a good thing.

Perhaps one of the worst examples is the site on Kuhio that once was home to a Jack In The Box fast food restaurant.

For a while, this was merely an empty storefront. That's bad enough; but now, boarded up with plywood, it's taken on the look of a post-riot inner city. If you're a tourist, what are you supposed to think?

Or how about this massive vacancy--- just about all of King Kalakaua Plaza, where Banana Republic and others used to be.

Although a seasonal Toys R Us Express store was here for a few weeks, otherwise the whole complex seems to have gone under. Again, how is a visitor going to react? Will they conclude that they've stumbled into some sort of abandoned downtown area instead of the tropical paradise on which they thought they were spending their hard-earned money?

At least this site, the former movie theaters on Seaside, is at long (very long) last being made into a new Ross store.

It's not much to look at right now, and it doesn't help today's tourist to know that the store will open sometime later this year, but it's a welcome step in the right direction.

But one of our "favorites" at least in terms of being an example is on Kalakaua at the very `Ewa end of Waikiki.

The "new" Prince Kuhio Pharmacy has been "coming soon" for something like a year or more, with little obvious progress, although on our last visit we saw a few workmen on the site.

There are many attractive and well-kept retail locations in Waikiki. Proximity to boarded-up or seemingly abandoned or perpetually under-construction properties has to be harmful at some level, and clearly such a situtation is unfair to the large majority of vendors and owners who do keep up appearances.

But our point is simply this: eyesores and obvious evidence of lack of prosperity are not what we're selling to tourists, who want that special Hawaiian experience and are paying well to get it. If we want them to come back, and to tell their friends and neighbors about their great experience in Waikiki, we have to do better.  We urge our civic and business leaders to pay close attention to the image being portrayed.