High-rises are high-profile but they’re not the only construction projects underway in Hawai?i. In fact, government and institutional projects dominate the construction scene this year.
Pacific Business News research has rounded up the biggest ongoing construction projects, ranked by their permit value. Number 1 is the Consolidated Car Rental Facility at the Honolulu International Airport.
That is being built by Watts Constructors in a contract valued at $329 million. The list of the top 25 contracts includes also facilities for Fort Shafter, a new state hospital for Hawaii, rail stations for HART, and buildings for public and private schools.
In Honolulu, construction costs — still the fourth highest in the world — are expected to flatten a bit. According to analysts Rider Levett Bucknall, construction costs will climb just three percent this year, one of the smallest increases among the U.S. cities surveyed.
Trump administration tariffs on Chinese goods are having an effect on projects underway. Developer Christine Camp, for example, tells PBN that the increased price of steel led her Avalon Development company to redesign an upcoming Kapolei industrial warehouse as a concrete building instead of a steel one.
Contractors in Hawaii are starting to source construction materials from other Southeast Asian nations, such as Indonesia, Burma and Brunei, to keep costs in line with estimates that had been based on importing materials from China.
