The new state agency that will take over management of Maunakea will have a new home in Hilo.
The state Board of Land and Natural Resources on Friday approved a request by the Maunakea Stewardship and Oversight Authority to lease a state-owned parcel in the Kanoelehua Industrial Area to establish its headquarters.
The lot, located on East Kawili Street just off Highway 11, formerly was the site of a Bank of Hawaii franchise, which leased the property in 1962. While Bank of Hawaii renewed its 55-year lease in 2017, it declined to do so a second time after that extension ran out in 2021.
Since Bank of Hawaii vacated the lot, the property has been unused and the building boarded up.
Department of Land and Natural Resources Land Division Administrator Russell Tsuji told the land board Friday that Hawaii County at one point had designs on the property for a homeless services building, but ultimately lost interest.
Tsuji said the property is “probably the premier property we have for lease on the Big Island,” based on the current condition of the site, and said the DLNR had planned to auction off a lease to the site.
Instead, the DLNR will grant a 30-year lease to MKSOA at a great discount: the DLNR will waive the authority’s first seven years of rent — determined by appraisal to be more than $95,000 per year — in order to offset the agency’s costs of renovating the building and closing a cesspool on the property.
Lloyd Unebasami, interim administrative services officer for MKSOA, said the authority has about $400,000 set aside to close down the large-capacity cesspool and connect the property to the county sewer.
Unebasami added that the building is ideally located for the authority, and not just in a practical sense.
“We can actually see the mountain from the building,” Unebasami said. “That’s something intrinsic that we feel is important.”
Bill Stormont, MKSOA project director, said the building is large enough for the authority’s administrative purposes for the time being, adding that it should be suitable for community meetings in the future.
However, he said, it will not be sufficient as a baseyard, which the authority eventually will need to conduct operations on Maunakea after it takes over full management of the mountain from the University of Hawaii in 2028.
The land board voted unanimously to grant the authority’s lease request. BLNR chair Dawn Chang thanked MKSOA for their interest in the property, saying that if they didn’t occupy the long-vacated building, “somebody else would.”
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
