Parking is tight – and expensive — in downtown Honolulu. One large employer just bought a parking garage for its employees to use.
Bank of Hawaiʻi recently bought Marks Garage in Chinatown to provide affordable parking for its employees.
The garage has more than 300 spaces. It's a six-minute walk from the bank's headquarters at the corner of King and Bishop streets.
The bank paid $16.5 million for the property, which is on the corner of Pauahi Street and Nuʻuanu Avenue. The seller was a company called Mobile Infrastructure.
Anyone who works in downtown Honolulu knows it's tough to find parking. And if there is parking, it's expensive.
It's not uncommon to pay $200 a month to park. Some office buildings charge closer to $300 a month.
Jon-Eric Greene of Colliers Hawaiʻi listed the property for the seller back in September. He said it drew a lot of interest from nearby businesses looking for employee parking.
Greene was also once a co-owner of the property with Andrew Friedlander, before they sold it to the Parking REIT in 2018 for $20 million. Mobile Infrastructure acquired it after the Parking REIT's CEO was charged with fraud in 2021.
Greene says it's good to see Marks Garage go to a local company that's going to continue to invest in Chinatown and downtown Honolulu.
Business leaders have been working to improve the districts since daily foot traffic dropped after COVID-19 fueled more remote work.
The Marks Garage property had fallen into disrepair in recent years. But a Bank of Hawaiʻi spokesperson says the bank plans to make the necessary repairs, and improvements, to the building.
