Amazon’s Proposed $600M Center In Kapolei Met With Some Skepticism

As Amazon plans to build a massive storage facility in Kapolei – taller than their the zoning of their property’s parcel currently allows – it will have to overcome several bureaucratic hurdles. 

Its first public test was facing a skeptical Kapolei neighborhood board, where Amazon representatives made their case Wednesday night after first presenting to them in December.

The facility would be the largest private investment ever in West Oʻahu, Amazon representatives said. It would cost $600 million and have 2.8 million square feet of floor space, the equivalent of almost 50 football fields. While employees are not saying how tall the facility would be, they say it would surpass the parcel’s 60-foot height limit, requiring the company to ask the city for a zoning change. 

The project still has to win over the city planning commission and then the Honolulu City Council, where it would be introduced as a bill and require three readings to pass. Amazon representatives suggested those meetings would happen in the fall.

Stephen Maduli-Williams, a senior economic development manager at Amazon, told the audience Amazon aims to invest in employment, education, youth, food security and infrastructure. 

“The overall ultimate goal is to be a good paying, good partner and really invest in West Oʻahu the way it deserves to be invested,” he said. That includes recruiting employees who live close by to be part of the facility’s 1,000+ person workforce. But West Oʻahu residents are wary these promises won’t necessarily come to fruition. 

“What assurances do we have that you, Amazon, (are) not going to replace the 1,000+ people that you are saying that you’re going to employ?” board member Sheila Medeiros asked.

At the end of the meeting, board members passed two resolutions: form a group of local residents and representatives of local organizations to continue discussions over the coming months, and support the zoning change on the condition that those discussions are productive. 

Because those decisions are being made at the neighborhood board level, they aren’t binding.

'They Always Take More Than They Give'

In the view of some board members, Hawaiʻi has been the victim of corporate capitalism, and this project struck some as potentially extractive.

“Every single corporation that comes in here – all the Walmarts, all the Costcos, all the hotels – they always take more than they give,” board member Tiare Taala said Wednesday night. “Every single time.”

Board member Mikiala Lidstone echoed that sentiment, saying that mass consumerism and consumption is “slowly eating away at the well-being of our beautiful island community.”

The presentation was good in the sense that it didn’t leave her with questions, she said, and it was what the community wanted to hear. Some community members even gave Amazon kudos for outreach, which they said has been better than other development proposals. But Lidstone worries that just because the company promises great things doesn’t mean those things will actually happen. 

“I want to like this project,” she said, “I really do. But it’s really uncomfortable because so many of our hopes have not been fulfilled.”

Other board members and community members worried the 1,000-plus jobs Amazon claims would be created could dwindle in the future as artificial intelligence and robotics continue to advance, replacing human workers.

Maduli-Williams responded at the meeting that robotics would help move products, but technological upgrades at Amazon’s other warehouses of this size have not led to reductions in the human workforce. However, The New York Times reported late last year that the company plans to need fewer workers as it automates more of operations, including in its warehouses.

Some community members suggested additional community benefits Amazon could provide, including expanding the city’s rail system Skyline farther west and help with waste management as Oʻahu’s only municipal landfill approaches capacity. 

More Convenience?  

Amazon opened a distribution center at Sand Island last year. That facility focuses on shipping products to customers, Maduli-Williams told Civil Beat, and its products are shipped in from a fulfillment center in California. With the planned Kapolei facility, he said, is that products wouldn't have to go to California before being shipped to Hawaiʻi.

The zoning change would give them the square footage needed to meet customer demand, according to the company. 

Vans would mostly still deliver from Sand Island, Maduli-Williams said, which often means a two-day shipping timeline, but the company’s smaller delivery system, Flex, could make shipment times even quicker than that for West Oʻahu and Central Oʻahu residents. 

“The goal there is to actually have same-day delivery,” he said.  

Shortly before the meeting started, ʻEwa resident Shane Rennoe was tinkering with an radio-controlled car around the corner from where Amazon's facility would go. While he didn't attend the meeting, he said he sees pros and cons to the proposal. 

“It’s good because it’ll be convenient,” Rennoe said. “It’s bad for the small businesses that might carry the same type of items Amazon might have.” 

Rennoe said he’s kind of excited about the prospect of same-day shipping, but he lamented the rise of online shopping and how it makes people less willing to leave their homes and socialize with store owners and cashiers. 

Kiran Polk, executive director of the Kapolei Chamber of Commerce, said Thursday she thinks Amazon’s entry into West Oʻahu would be good for local small businesses. 

“There might be some opportunity there from them being in our backyard,” she said, citing a figure from Maduli-Williams that 60% of items sold on Amazon come from small businesses.

She also said more jobs in Kapolei would be a great opportunity for West Oʻahu residents, many of whom currently have a brutal commute to and from urban Honolulu.

“It would take down the traffic, right?” she said. “The whole live, work, play of Kapolei and West Oʻahu – they’re investing in that, and so that’s another big plus to me.”

But Polk said she understands people’s fears that promises won’t be kept. West Oʻahu has been historically neglected, she said, pointing to an example from last month’s neighborhood board meeting when city officials explained their plans to expand the island’s existing landfill in Nānākuli rather than relocate it as the mayor had promised. 

“They’re just a little bit overcautious," she said of local residents, "because quite honestly, we’ve been bearing the burden of all of these services on the West Side. And that’s no secret.”