The Waikīkī Business Improvement District turns 25 this year. Former University of Hawaiʻi Vice Chancellor and current urban planning professor Karl Kim played a hand in creating the model, and its success is being looked at as an option for Downtown Honolulu.
What has to happen to make downtown more inviting, cleaner and safer for people who work and live in the area?
The work of Kim’s graduate students is being spotlighted at a downtown exhibit space in the historic Liberty Bank Building designed by Vladimir Ossipoff. It gives you a glimpse of what’s possible for the future of Downtown Honolulu, from the Financial District to Chinatown and the budding Arts District.
Kim hails the effort as an opportunity to explore what’s possible for a downtown where office space is making way for residential apartments and property owners are exploring an added tax — an assessment to help reach that goal. But what worked in Waikīkī may not fly in downtown.
“Part of what we were trying to do with this project is to get people to understand what the challenges are, to look at the analyses that have been done, and then see some of the potential outcomes of this. And so in addition to reports and presentations, each of the students was required to do a poster," Kim said.
Around 20 posters are on display at the Shade Institute in Chinatown until the end of the month. Collectively, the posters show the existing conditions and contain methods and tools for scenario planning, and other alternatives.
Kim said that if people don't feel safe in the area, they will not want to live and invest in Chinatown and Downtown Honolulu.
“These are challenging problems, and they're related to a whole series of factors and conditions, and actually even designs that affect these spaces,” Kim said. “And so that's part of the challenging work to do, and a lot of that was captured in the scenarios and in terms of the work that the team members produced.”
Graduate student John Voylztek was part of the team that considered the history of the area.
"Our team looked at what a business improvement district could do if it focused on historic and cultural resources within the area. We did a survey of a lot of the historic buildings, both in downtown and Chinatown,” Voylztek said. ”We thought about what a business improvement district could do if it leveraged those resources and used it to create a stronger sense of place."
Another team looked at transportation since the Skyline rail stations are set to serve the area. Mikey Chacon said that the team treated the whole city center area, composed of Chinatown, Downtown, and the Arts District, as a terminal.
“The two Skyline rail stations are supposed to be in Chinatown, Downtown,” he added. “They're the closest stations to each other out of the whole line… The reason we want to treat it like one terminal is that there's a lot of mom-and-pop businesses there that can benefit.”
He also explained that the team focused on pedestrian wayfinding, which includes streamlining navigation for people to get off at transportation stations and walk to their destination.
Jacob Wruck and his team looked at sustainability through improving and mitigating urban heat.
“There are solar, free-standing, photovoltaic solar panels that actually track the sun like a flower would, and those can be used to generate shade on the sidewalks,” he explained. “So it's actually lowering the surface temperature and subsequently lowering the requirements for air conditioning. So it's a win-win. And at the same time, it's doing that, it's actually generating electricity.”
Kim shared that planning is not just about knowledge to action, it's about generating alternatives and evaluating them.
“It's also trying to understand what the underlying problems are and what can be done,” he added. “With limited resources, with challenges, in terms of focusing the assets that we have to be able to improve the area.”
This interview aired on The Conversation on May 21, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
