Local real estate developer Stanford Carr expects to sign initial state contracts this week to deliver an estimated $5 billion to $6 billion project far dwarfing anything he has ever produced.
The plan to create a mixed-use community anchored by a new stadium on 98 acres of state land in Halawa is a huge endeavor for the 63-year-old Carr, who was born and raised on Maui and got into part of the industry in 1982, when he became a self-employed flooring contractor at age 20 after deciding not to become a doctor.
Since forming Honolulu-based Stanford Carr Development in 1990, he has produced close to 6,000 homes among 28 projects on Oahu, Maui and Hawaii island.
Carr’s career pinnacle and legacy could be the New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District envisioned for development over 25 years.
Thursday, a day after board members of the state agency overseeing NASED voted to authorize contracts for a partnership led by Carr to demolish the condemned 50-year-old Aloha Stadium and build and operate a smaller new replacement, Carr signed a $52,000 check to cover a city fee for the demolition and grading permit.
He said he feels immense pressure to fulfill a vision generated by many state leaders that has been beset by years of political disagreements and delays but is now on the precipice of construction.
“I feel like a 10,000-pound gorilla is on my back, you know?” he said from a conference room in his 27th-floor office in the Alakea Corporate Tower, filled with poster boards reflecting imagined pieces of the project slated to include roughly 4,500 mid-rise and high-rise homes, restaurants, shops, music venues, a cultural museum, a hotel and more all around a 22,500-seat stadium with future expansion potential.
“I cannot screw up,” Carr said. “I’m born and raised here. I’m the fifth generation. My family name is on the thing. So I want people to be praising me for the next 50 years, not criticizing me.”
Successful bidder
The opportunity presented by the state, which includes $350 million of Hawaii taxpayer funding appropriated by the Legislature to build a new stadium expected to cost about $475 million, was daunting enough that one of two interested bidders withdrew their proposal in 2024. That left a partnership led by Carr as the sole prospector to carry out the project if terms could be negotiated with the Stadium Authority.
Partners assembled by Carr include Development Ventures Group Inc., which is the U.S. development arm of Japanese construction giant Kajima Corp. that also owns Hawaiian Dredging Construction Co. Other partners are construction management firm AECOM Hunt and international development firm The Cordish Cos.
Design firms in the partnership include Carr’s Alakea Design Group along with local and international firms RMA Architects, SB Architects, Henning Larsen and WCIT Architecture.
The team, Aloha Halawa Development Partners, has a leader whom veteran local real estate industry consultant Ricky Cassiday described as well-suited for the gargantuan task.
Cassiday said Carr has taken on challenging projects, worked with difficult landowners and produced award-winning communities with approaches that have been shrewd and tough in some instances but also earned him a lot of respect and friends.
“All along the way he really learns,” said Cassiday, adding that Carr has incredible energy, smarts and strategy in driving real estate deals. “He’s a good poker player.”
Brennon Morioka, dean of the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s College of Engineering and former Stadium Authority board chair, said Carr’s past achievements, hard work ethic and deep local roots create confidence the developer can deliver.
“He has Hawaii in mind first,” said Morioka, who is Gov. Josh Green’s special adviser on NASED. “I knew we had somebody that was in it for the long haul and not just going to come in, do something, make some money and leave. … His family is going to stay here. His kids are going to raise their kids here. He has a lot invested in Hawaii.”
Floor to ceiling
As a kid, Carr grew up in rural Kula, Maui, and moved to Oahu in 1980 to pursue a biology degree from UH with the intent of becoming a doctor.
He said some doctors encouraged him to become a businessman, and two years later he started his own flooring contractor business, United Contracting Co., based on trade knowledge he learned from an uncle.
One of Carr’s early jobs was laying new carpet at the state Capitol, and the work also led to interactions with big-name Hawaii developers in the 1980s who included Bruce Stark, Jim Schuler, Mike McCormack and U.J. “Rick” Rainalter.
Carr made the jump to developer in 1990, and in 1993 finished his first project, Pukalani Fairway Estates with 24 homes along the Pukalani Country Club golf course on Maui.
A couple of other Carr projects in the 1990s included two subdivisions in the state’s master-planned Villages of Kapolei community, the 645-home Kekuilani village and 448-home Iwalani village.
An even bigger move occurred in 1999 when he bought out public stockholders of Hawaii Land &Farming Co., a firm that owned about 2,700 acres on Maui, Kauai and Hawaii island and was once a division of C. Brewer &Co., one of Hawaii’s “Big Five” businesses that dominated commerce for nearly a century centered around plantation agriculture.
Carr paid about $4 million and assumed $20 million in debt for the financially struggling company. He then sold much of the land to concentrate on producing the 540-acre community of Kehalani on Maui, where Carr was master developer and built about 600 of the 2,400 homes at the Wailuku development, which includes a commercial center and a public school and is almost done after 25 years.
Hits and misses
Not all of Carr’s planned projects were realized. Early on, a 16-story condominium on the slopes of Punchbowl conceived in 1990 with backing from Japan Oil Co. didn’t take off.
In 2005, an estimated $866 million Carr proposal to redevelop state land in Kakaako Makai was passed over for a competitor’s plan that ultimately was blocked by the Legislature.
His proposal included 1,360 condos, a 240-room hotel, retail, restaurants, an amphitheater, a pedestrian bridge over Kewalo Harbor channel, a children’s theater, a cultural museum and a science and technology center. He said he spent nine months and $800,000 putting the bid together.
Carr also tried to buy the 500-room Waikiki Beachcomber Hotel in 2001, and about four years ago dropped a bid to take over another developer’s long-stalled $800 million plan to turn the former Kam Drive- In movie theater site in Aiea into a high-rise housing complex.
Types of projects Carr has delivered include affordable housing, resort homes and market-priced residences, including two towers in Kakaako — the 43-story Keauhou Place with 423 condo units completed in 2017 and the adjacent 19-story Halekauwila Place with 204 rental apartments reserved for low-income households.
Halekauwila Place was produced on state land under a request for proposals from the Hawaii Community Development Authority, a state agency. Another major deal Carr has done with the state, in addition to the two Villages of Kapolei subdivisions, was acquiring six affordable-housing complexes with about 1,200 units from the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corp. in 2019 and 2020 for about $165 million with a requirement to spend $85 million on improvements.
His single-biggest project from a cost standpoint was The Peninsula, a 630-home community in Hawaii Kai that cost $335 million to finish in 2007.
Not Carr-ville
Some past Carr projects include elements that are envisioned for NASED, including a 25-year development horizon, a mix of affordable and market-priced housing, towers and commercial development.
Like Kehalani, Carr intends to have other developers produce homes around a new Aloha Stadium that is expected to open in March 2029. That way, more homes can be produced sooner to give the community a critical mass that helps support commercial features.
“We’re going to bring in guest builders,” Carr said. “You don’t want to build it all yourself.”
Multiple developers producing pieces of NASED also spreads risk and design styles.
“I don’t want it to be Carr-ville,” he said. “I want diversity.”
Carr currently is busy with three other projects. The furthest one along is Hale Moiliili, a 23-story tower with 271 rental apartments for state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands beneficiaries with low and moderate incomes. Construction on the $155 million project is up to the 18th floor and is expected to be done by the end of 2026.
Last week, concrete foundation slabs started to get poured for a 127-unit affordable rental housing project called Kaleimao Village that Carr is developing on city land in Ewa Beach.
The third project is a two-tower complex with 859 condo units slated for Kamehameha Schools land in Kakaako. Carr expects to begin selling units soon, with construction to follow.
He said adding NASED to his plate isn’t too much given the work to be done by partners, planned hiring at his own companies and his previous work volume that at one time involved delivering 400 homes a year on three islands.
Currently, Carr’s development firm employs 20 people, including one son, Dustin, who has a degree in business economics and joined in July. Another son, who shares his father’s first name and has a degree in real estate development and minored in business law, has been with the company longer.
Carr said he expects gradual hiring at the company and its architecture affiliate Alakea Design, which employs eight, as NASED work ramps up.
Two complex NASED deal documents — a master development agreement tied to redeveloping 78 acres around the 20 acres occupied by the stadium, and an easement and shared infrastructure agreement — still need final touches before signing. But Morioka is confident the state has an ideal lead partner to realize NASED.
“The guy’s all-in,” Morioka said of Carr. “He’s all-in. And that’s all you can ask for in a partner.”
Source: The Garden Island
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