An iconic building in Honolulu's Chinatown has a new owner after years of being vacant.
The Wo Fat Building in Chinatown has been around for more than 100 years. After surviving the Chinatown fires in 1886 and 1900, it was rebuilt nearly 90 years ago to its current iteration.
The building at the corner of Maunakea and Hotel streets long housed a restaurant. It was so iconic that it inspired the name of the villain in the original “Hawaii Five-0” as well as the reboot.
About nine years ago, a group of investors that included former University of Hawaiʻi football coach June Jones bought the shuttered restaurant building for $4 million. They had plans to renovate and restore the building and reopen it with a restaurant and bar on the ground floor with about two dozen hotel rooms on the upper floors.
But that plan never materialized, and the building ended up under the ownership of a local contractor, White Sands Construction.
Now, White Sands Construction has sold the Wo Fat building to a pair of real estate investors who paid $2 million dollars in a deal that closed in July.
The new owners, Ave Kwok and Del Fujinaka, said they plan to convert the building's upstairs space into residential units. They are planning to fill the ground floor with retail shops.
So far, the buyers have spent $800,000 dollars on renovations, and Kwok said they plan to spend another $3.5 million to complete the project.
Kwok said the project is currently going through the permitting process. He said they’ve already reserved a quarter of the residential units for tenants and have 11 potential retailers lined up for the ground floor space.
One more thing they’re planning — a museum dedicated to telling the iconic Wo Fat building's history.
