Maui Council committee advances $4M budget amendment for Hālau of ʻŌiwi Arts

A Maui County Council committee recommended first reading approval Tuesday of a $4 million bond funding request for the Hālau of ʻŌiwi Arts project in Wailuku, even as council members raised pointed questions about why items originally represented as part of the project had been dropped before construction began.

Bills 70 and 80 of 2026, heard by the Budget, Finance and Economic Development Committee, would amend the current fiscal year budget to add $4 million in bond funding for the under construction Native Hawaiian cultural facility at the corner of Church and Vineyard streets in Wailuku. A pre-construction blessing was held April last year.

The additional money would restore several items cut from the project during post-bid value engineering, including commercial kitchen equipment; telecom, data and security infrastructure; a rooftop photovoltaic system; audio-visual systems; and acoustic treatments for the second-floor event space.

The add-back items, combined with extensions to architect-engineer and construction management contracts and allowances for cost escalation, would bring the project’s total estimated cost to approximately $50.5 million, up from the original budget of $46.5 million, which included $11 million in congressional direct spending.

Committee members were told the project was bid out in fall 2023 and came in at $52.7 million — roughly $6.2 million over budget. Rather than cancel the contract, county officials proceeded with construction and worked with the contractor on a value engineering process to reduce costs and come within the original budget.

Changes included switching from cast-in-place concrete walls to mostly pre-cast tilt-up panels, changing roofing materials and eliminating architectural features such as high-level clerestory windows, exposed wood beams, stone masonry veneer and stamped concrete in the courtyard.

The remaining $4 million gap stems from items included in the bid as additive alternates but could not be incorporated into the contract given available funds.

Council Member Nohelani Uʻu-Hodgins asked for confirmation that the final grand total for the project would be $50.5 million. “Would that cover all the anticipated needs?,” she asked. “Are you going to be asking us for more money? Or is this good to go?”

After a pause, Dan Shupack, a civil engineer with the Department of Management, hedged a bit, saying: “We anticipate this will cover everything. (But) we can’t say . . . it’s the construction landscape with cost escalations and whatnot, it’s been very volatile.” He added that more than a million dollars was available for contingencies.

Uʻu-Hodgins added that kitchens are notoriously expensive, and commercial kitchens are extremely expensive.

She said she wanted to ensure the project is appropriately funded.

“We have been seeing over and over again, you folks come back to us like, ‘Oh, psych, you know, concrete was more than we thought,’ right? And, like, we are seeing that constantly,” Uʻu-Hodgins said.

Construction is expected to complete in the summer of 2027, with a grand opening in the fall.

Council Member Kauanoe Batangan questioned why, if officials knew before signing the contract that the additive alternates could not be funded, the request for additional money did not come before the Council sooner. He said those items had been “represented to this body and to the public” as part of the project when it was first approved.

“I think that number is a little suspect, because if you had things that you told this Council were going to be in the project, but included them as optional, I think that should have been captured as part of the overage,” Batangan said.

Deputy Managing Director Erin Wade said the administration was being fiscally responsible by first trying to stay within the amount the County Council originally budgeted. So, the administration worked with the contractor to determine how much contingency funding could be used and sought savings during construction.

This approach took time and meant coming back to the Council only when necessary, she said.

“We would much rather be able to keep the budget at where the Council has set it for us, in terms of a limitation, and try to build to that and be responsible for those funds,” she said.

Wade cautioned against simply “changing the bar for the contractor because that tends to push up prices that we get in for our bids because the assumption of the contractors community then is we can just continue to come back and ask for more money.”

Council Member Tom Cook, a contractor, suggested the County consider restoring some architectural elements — such as the original standing-seam metal roof — that cannot easily be changed once the building is complete, while pursuing community fundraising for optional finish items like stamped concrete. “Now is the time to spend money and not buy stuff and have to fix it, so we can do it prudently,” he said.

Council Member Keani Rawlins-Fernandez asked whether the construction methodology change — from cast-in-place to tilt-up concrete walls — had any quality implications. Shupack said there should be no difference in structural quality, only in cost and installation time.

Uʻu-Hodgins asked for a breakdown of the $4 million in additional spending. Schupac provided rough figures: kitchen equipment approximately $770,000; rooftop photovoltaic system approximately $532,000; audio-visual systems approximately $1.04 million; telecom, data and security infrastructure approximately $652,000; acoustic treatments approximately $194,000; and professional services contract extensions totaling approximately $854,000.

Rawlins-Fernandez noted that the project grew partly from a 2019 Council resolution supporting the Huamakahikina Declaration. When the former Wailuku Civic Center project was defunded, the hālau concept emerged in its place.

“This wasn’t meant to be the only one,” Rawlins-Fernandez said. “It was meant to have one in every district — the way that we have baseball fields, swimming pools, gyms.”

During public testimony, a member of the public raised concerns about cultural desecration at the work site and during construction of the adjacent parking structure.

The two-story, approximately 47,000-square-foot facility is currently going vertical and includes ground-floor incubator retail space, second-floor studios and practitioner space, a large gathering and performance hall, a commercial kitchen and a connected courtyard. The building is designed to hurricane standards and will function as an emergency shelter and joint information center. The photovoltaic system, if restored, would help the project achieve LEED Gold certification — which officials said would be a first for a county facility.

Bills 70 and 80 now advance to the full Council for their first reading.

Budget Chair Yuki Lei Sugimura said she would ask the administration to come back with a detailed cost breakdown for the project before the bills’ second reading.

The committee is running out of time to amend the fiscal 2026 budget, which ends on June 30.