‘A‘ali‘i at Ward Village

‘A‘ali‘i is the 42-story tower at the center of Ward Village, Howard Hughes’ 60-acre master-planned community in Kaka‘ako. It sits at 987 Queen Street, immediately mauka of Victoria Ward Park and directly beside Ae‘o, the tower above Whole Foods Market.

The building was Howard Hughes’ answer to a pattern they saw in their own sales data: the smaller, lower-priced homes at Ae‘o and Ke Kilohana sold fastest. So ‘A‘ali‘i went the other direction from Waiea and Anaha — compact, efficiently planned residences paired with an amenity package larger than towers three times its price point. Howard Hughes called it Smarter Living. The market called it correct: 751 homes, the largest unit count in Ward Village at the time, and it sold out.

Construction finished in fall 2021. The developer’s inventory is long gone, which means every home at ‘A‘ali‘i today is a resale — and that changes the buying process completely. You are not on a waitlist or in a release. You are competing for specific units on the open market, and the advantages are real: the building is finished, the maintenance fee is a known number rather than a projection, the AOAO has years of financial history you can read, and you can stand in the actual room before you write an offer.

‘A‘ali‘i at a Glance

The Residences

‘A‘ali‘i is split between a high-rise tower and a lower podium, with parking occupying the first several levels. Podium homes are mostly studios and one-bedrooms; the tower carries the full mix. Every home has a lanai, and every home comes with at least one assigned parking stall, with some two-bedrooms carrying two.

Two Full Amenity Floors

‘A‘ali‘i was the first Ward Village tower to dedicate two entire floors to residents rather than one deck and a fitness room. Together they total roughly an acre. The unusual move was the second one: instead of selling the penthouse level as residences, Howard Hughes gave the top floor of the building back to the building.

Ground Level and Building Services

• Pet friendly, with a dog park — roughly 1,940 square feet of dedicated dog run at ground level, plus a dog wash. Breed and weight rules are set by the house rules; confirm them if you have a large dog.
• Storage that actually fits island life — surfboard and bicycle storage, secured resident bike parking, and separate storage lockers. Lockers and climate-controlled storage rooms are individually owned and add real dollars to a resale price.
• Staffed around the clock — 24-hour security and staff, fob-secured entry and elevators, secured garage, resident manager.
• Retail below — roughly 11,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space along the Queen and Halekauwila frontage.
• The building app — residents reserve amenity and event spaces through a dedicated ‘A‘ali‘i app rather than a paper sign-up sheet.
• EV charging — present in the garage, but access varies by stall. Some stalls have dedicated outlets and some do not. Verify for the specific stall attached to the unit.

Gallery

Renderings, site plans, and presentation materials released by the developer during the sales period. The building has since been completed, so treat these as design intent rather than a record of the finished product — and note that the amenity and unit layouts shown were subject to change through construction.

Reserved Housing at ‘A‘ali‘i — Read This Before You Offer

Under the Kaka‘ako Mauka Area Rules, developers must set aside a share of new units for households earning up to 140% of area median income. At ‘A‘ali‘i that share was 150 units, sold at below-market prices to buyers who qualified through the Hawai‘i Community Development Authority. ‘A‘ali‘i is vested under HCDA’s 2005 rules, along with the other Howard Hughes projects.

Those units did not stop being restricted when the building opened. Each carries a regulated term — two, five, or ten years, tied to the unit’s original affordability — during which two provisions apply.

• Owner-occupancy — the owner must live in the unit through the regulated term.
• Buyback — if the owner wants to sell during that term, HCDA has the first option to purchase the unit at a prescribed price rather than the open-market price. The sale cannot simply be listed and closed.
• Shared equity — a portion of the appreciation is owed back to HCDA on sale or transfer. Recent rule amendments allow an owner to prepay the shared equity and obtain a release rather than waiting out the term.
• Release paperwork — closing on a restricted unit requires HCDA to execute a Release of Unilateral Declaration. That is a process with a timeline, not a signature at the escrow table.

How Reserved & Affordable Housing Works in Hawai‘i →

What It Costs to Own Here

‘A‘ali‘i is one of the more affordable carrying costs in Ward Village, and that is a function of arithmetic rather than generosity: the maintenance fee is charged per interior square foot, and the homes are small. A 300-square-foot studio and a 3,000-square-foot penthouse can sit in buildings with similar per-foot rates and produce monthly bills an order of magnitude apart.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

Two Things Worth Understanding

• Opening-day fees are not forever fees. ‘A‘ali‘i opened with a maintenance fee near a dollar per interior square foot. Hawai‘i condominium fees typically rise a few percent a year, and they can jump harder when a developer-controlled budget hands off to an owner-controlled association. Elsewhere in Ward Village that transition produced a fee increase of more than fifty percent at one building. Ask for the actual current figure for the actual unit, not the number that appeared in 2021 marketing.
• Insurance is the pressure point right now. Hawai‘i’s property insurance market has tightened sharply for coastal high-rises, and association premiums are the single fastest-moving line in most condominium budgets. This shows up in your maintenance fee, and it shows up in whether your lender is comfortable with the building’s coverage. It is a question worth asking early rather than at underwriting.

The Location

‘A‘ali‘i sits in the interior of Ward Village rather than on the Ala Moana Boulevard front row, and for a lot of buyers that is the point — it trades a direct ocean frontage for the shortest walk to nearly everything, at a materially lower price per foot than the oceanfront towers.

Two honest notes on the neighborhood. Ward Village remains an active construction environment and will through the end of the decade — several towers are still to be built, and construction noise and traffic are part of daily life in the surrounding blocks. And while Honolulu’s Skyline rail is planned to reach the Kaka‘ako area, that segment is not open. Treat rail proximity as a future consideration rather than a current amenity.

Buying a Resale at ‘A‘ali‘i

A finished building is a different transaction from a presale, and mostly an easier one. There is no Developer’s Public Report to wade through, no four-year deposit schedule, and no rendering standing in for a room. What replaces all of that is document review on a live association and competition for specific units.

• Get your financing sorted first — and tell your lender the unit size up front. Very small studios can run into loan-program square-footage minimums, and lenders also look at a building’s owner-occupancy ratio and investor concentration. Better to learn that before you find the unit than after.
• Confirm the Reserved Housing status — the first question on any ‘A‘ali‘i unit, before price or condition. See the section above.
• Read the AOAO documents — declaration, bylaws, house rules, current budget, most recent reserve study, and recent minutes. This is where you find pending assessments, insurance changes, pet limits, and rules that will govern how you live in the home.
• Confirm the rental rules if you plan to rent — short-term and vacation rental use is not permitted here. Get the minimum lease term and any registration requirements from the house rules in writing before you underwrite a rental return.
• Pin down what actually conveys — parking stall number and type, storage locker or storage room, EV outlet, and the furniture package. Every one of these is a real dollar figure at ‘A‘ali‘i, and every one of them has to be named in the contract rather than assumed.
• Inspect anyway — a 2021 building is young, but appliances, split A/C units, and lanai doors are five years into service, and unit-level issues are the buyer’s problem after closing.
• Use the seller’s disclosure — Hawai‘i requires a written disclosure statement from the seller, and you have a defined window to review it. Read it against the association documents rather than in isolation.

Building & Developer Details

‘A‘ali‘i also holds one of the larger curated collections of Hawai‘i-based art in a Honolulu residential building — work by local painters, photographers, and makers installed throughout the lobby, corridors, and amenity floors.

Looking at ‘A‘ali‘i?

Send us a unit number and we will pull the maintenance fee, the reserved-housing status, the parking and storage detail, what the comparable stacks have actually closed at, and whether it is worth your Saturday. Or tell us what you are looking for and we will watch the building for you — and talk through how ‘A‘ali‘i compares to Ae‘o, Kō‘ula, The Park, and the wider Kaka‘ako market.

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