Goodbye to Ward Centre and Kilohana Square
We lament the generations-old buildings, the latest closures in an unending cycle.
Kilohana Square closed in Kapahulu after 55 years. Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino
“Auwē!” Maria Jane Chamberlain Forbes lamented the changes overtaking Honolulu. New projects were reshaping the place where she was born and raised, she wrote—back in the late 1800s. The dismay of Forbes, the first head of Lunalilo Home for Aged Hawaiians, was part of a Hawaiian Mission Houses performance of writings by historical figures in June. Forbes’ words were a reminder that in Hawai‘i and everywhere, the only constant is change.
That same month, Ward Centre and Kilohana Square in Kapahulu closed. Still up in the air in midsummer was the fate of Chinatown Cultural Plaza. All three—built in 1984, 1971 and 1974, respectively—stood for generations, clustering together the kinds of places that make up life in urban Honolulu. Remember the antique shops and eateries of Kilohana Square? Reading in the aisles of Borders at Ward Centre? The crab artichoke dip that started every pau hana at Ryan’s Grill? “So many Taco Tuesdays back in the day at Compadres!” one Instagram commenter wrote of the mall, which housed two dozen businesses in its final weeks. “Oh it was a step back in time,” someone else reminisced, “but in a lovely way.”
Ward Centre was the newest and last vestige of a sprawling complex that included Ward Farmers Market (where Haili’s Hawaiian Food and Real a Gastropub used to be) and Ward Warehouse, which shuttered in 2017. Now that Ward Centre is being redeveloped into condo towers with shops and a park, and a self-storage facility is replacing Kilohana Square, our laments are fresh and full-throated—just as they are every time we learn that an old bowling alley or other beloved landmark is closing.
Kilohana Square closed in Kapahulu after 55 years. Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino
The landscape Forbes saw in her lifetime was immeasurably different from what Native Hawaiians beheld a century earlier; a century from now it will be unrecognizable again. Change is like tradewinds and Kona weather: inexorable and inevitable.
At least we still have Chinatown Cultural Plaza. Though redevelopment seems all but certain for the aging monolith, more than 40 restaurants, jewelry shops, grocers, acupuncture clinics and others still do business there. Sunday dim sum lunches, shopping with Popo, praying for good luck at the courtyard altar: Memories here, we still have time to make.
Mari Taketa is the dining editor of HONOLULU Magazine and editor of Frolic Hawai‘i.
