Queen Emma Apartments
71 UNITS · MULTIFAMILY · ACQUISITION/REHABILITATION (ADAPTIVE REUSE)
Rising twelve stories over Queen Emma Street at the edge of downtown Honolulu, the Queen Emma Building opened in July 1964 as the York International Building, the dream project of Dr. Richard You, the physician and Olympic weightlifting coach who trained gold medalist Tommy Kono. Designed by Jo Paul Rognstad and advertised as a complete medical-professional office building for “the new downtown Honolulu,” it housed doctors, dentists, therapists, a health club and, in the basement, Dr. You’s own boxing gym. Its hand-laid walls of protruding masonry earned it the affectionate nickname “the pimple building.” After decades of offices and clinics, the tower sat vacant for roughly ten years through two failed redevelopments, and Historic Hawaiʻi Foundation named it one of Hawaiʻi’s Most Endangered Historic Places in 2011.
Āhē Group, with its partner Southport Financial Services and the nonprofit Affordable Housing and Economic Development Foundation, bought the building in November 2019 through Queen Emma Partners LP to turn it into affordable rental housing, the first conversion of a commercial building the Hawaiʻi Housing Finance and Development Corporation had financed. HHFDC approved $20 million in Hula Mae Multi-Family tax-exempt bonds, 4% federal and state Low-Income Housing Tax Credits of $1,026,541 a year each, and a $16.46 million Rental Housing Revolving Fund loan; Bank of Hawaii provided $12 million in construction financing and an $8 million permanent loan, and Boston Financial Investment Management invested the tax-credit equity. The Honolulu City Council granted Chapter 201H exemptions by Resolution 19-163 in August 2019. Total development cost was $38.7 million, and the homes will stay affordable for 61 years.
Design Partners Incorporated and Swinerton Builders kept the landmark façade and rebuilt the interior from the structure up, cutting new windows into the mauka wall to create a double-loaded corridor of 31 studio, 13 one-bedroom and 26 two-bedroom homes on floors two through eleven, serving households earning up to 60% of area median income with four homes set aside at 30%. The ground floor holds the management office, interior bicycle storage, a mail room and a small retail space; the upper floors add community and exercise rooms, meeting space, storage lockers and laundry. More than 5,000 people applied for the first 70 homes in 2020. The project won the 2021 GCA Build Hawaiʻi Grand Prize and the 2022 NAIOP Hawaiʻi Kūkulu Hale Renovation Award, and sits a short walk from downtown’s central business district, Chinatown, the State Capitol and The Queen’s Medical Center.