County eyes former Kailua-Kona Kmart for West Hawai‘i events center

Hawai‘i County took a closer look at one of West Hawai‘i’s most visible empty storefronts, the former Kmart in Kailua-Kona’s Makalapua Shopping Center, as a possible events center that could give the long-vacant site a new public purpose. The 125,000-square-foot building sits on 11.35 acres of commercially zoned land and carries a county assessed value of $17.67 million.

The idea came to the administration from Micah Kamohoali‘i, a kumu hula, fashion designer and Aloha Festivals Island of Hawai‘i executive director, County Research and Development Director Benson Medina said. Medina said he and Kamohoali‘i walked the site with Queen Liliuokalani Trust before taking the concept to Mayor Kimo Alameda and Managing Director Bill Brilhante. The trust owns the property and wants to rent the facility out, Medina said.

The old Kmart has sat empty since the store closed in early August 2018. When it shut down, after opening in November 1994, Hawai‘i was left with just one Kmart, on Kauai, underscoring how the closure marked the end of an era for a familiar retail chain in the islands. Now the county is looking at whether the same box can be repurposed for festivals, cultural gatherings and other community uses instead of remaining a symbol of retail decline along Queen Ka‘ahumanu Highway.

Kamohoali‘i said the idea was tied in part to creating an economic draw for West Hawai‘i, especially with the return of Japanese flights after the pandemic. Medina told community members that other concepts for the site, including pickleball and a waterslide, had not secured the financial backing needed to make the property viable. He added that the county believed the only parties that seemed to have a realistic chance of making the site work were county officials themselves.

The discussion unfolded against a broader shift around Makalapua, where theater and other leases have weakened and left more of the area open to rethinking. In 2024, the trust also floated a much larger Makalapua Project District on 69.5 acres nearby, envisioning about 600 housing units, two hotels with 150 rooms, 220,900 square feet of commercial use and open space. That proposal would have sat beside Old Kona Industrial, Kona Commons and Old Kona Airport Park, showing how much redevelopment pressure is building around the west side of Kailua-Kona.

County officials said only preliminary discussions had been held about leasing the building for a multiuse park facility, and a planned walk-through had not yet happened. For now, the former Kmart remains an open question: whether one of Kona’s most recognizable dead retail spaces can become a working economic asset for West Hawai‘i.