WAHIAWA (KHON2) — Big changes are coming to Wahiawa. Old buildings are being demolished and modern facilities are going up.
Many said it will help revitalize the old plantation town and help bring crime levels down.
On Thursday, Wahiawa residents said they heard a loud boom coming from the former Wahiawa General Hospital.
“I looked outside and I couldn’t believe it was finally happening,” said Keoni Ahlo, who owns several Wahiawa businesses including BioFit and Teaspresso across the street from the hospital.
“We had been hearing rumors about it coming down, we didn’t know if it was true or not, but apparently it is true because they are tearing it down.”
The dilapidated long-term care facility building was built in 1966 and closed back in 2022, then the hospital was taken over by Queen’s Medical Center.
“It’s been around for a while, and it’s definitely something we’re used to seeing every day, so seeing it gone is going to be quite unusual.”
Queen’s Medical Center hasn’t announced plans for what will replace the structure.
On Saturday, Wahiawa Public Library will close its doors as it prepares for a new chapter and will be demolished along with the Dept. of Education’s Wahiawa High Core store front building.
“Both those buildings are sorely outdated,” explained Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz (D) Mililani Mauka, Wahiawa, Whitmore Village. “I mean we’re talking about almost termites holding it up.”
In about two years, the library will be part of a three-story building along with a parking garage.
“We’ll see a new library on the bottom, central district offices on the second floor, and community college classrooms on the third floor,” Dela Cruz explained.
He said the Wahiawa Center for Workforce Excellence will provide educational opportunities for North Shore too.
“I think we’ll see an uptake in usage of library especially for rural communities that might not have access to technology, computers and audio books, they can come to the library and that’s all accessible to them,” Sen. Dela Cruz added.
Construction is set to begin this summer and completed in Spring 2027.
It will be located right next door to the new Civic Center which will house the new Satellite City Hall and have a two-story judicial building which is slated to open December 2025.
Dela Cruz and others say all the work will help revitalize Wahiawa.
“[Wahiawa] kind of gets a bad rep once in a while, but if you look deep into all the different areas there’s a lot going on here, you can see changes, they’re subtle, we’re not trying to gentrify the area but we want to bring it up, clean things up and bring better and newer things to Wahiawa,” Ahlo said.