Location
Kāneʻohe, Hawai‘i
Client
State of Hawai‘i, Department of Education

HHF Planners (HHF) developed a report for Mōkapu Elementary School to assist the State of Hawai‘i Department of Education (HDOE) with defining gross facility space requirements, to assess the potential for reuse of existing structures, to clarify and address phasing challenges of building reuse or new construction, to identify offsite development requirements (e.g., needed contractor staging areas or swing space), provide a rough order of magnitude cost for redevelopment, and to illustrate a general redevelopment concept that will inform the design/delivery process, based on an enrollment target of 950 students (a 12 percent increase over existing conditions).
A rapid assessment of facility conditions was performed, followed by two pre-design charrettes. School-based stakeholders provided input about needed functional adjacencies and what works well/needs improvement on campus. During the second charrette, HDOE and Marine Corps Base Hawaii (MCB Hawaii) stakeholders discussed infrastructure, traffic concerns, possible building layouts for reuse and new construction alternatives, and began exploring phasing feasibility. Participants articulated four priorities that were used to develop alternatives: 1) mitigate on-street traffic queuing; 2) improve access, including multimodal connections (e.g. bicycle and pedestrian paths) between the school and the community it serves, 3) conformance to educators’ identified ideal facility functional relationships to support Mōkapu Elementary’s educational program goals, and 4) feasibility of construction and demolition phasing with minimal impacts to school operations, student performance and safety.
HHF, in collaboration with HDOE planners, MCB Hawaii stakeholders, and the Mōkapu Elementary steering group, created and vetted many alternatives, including new construction, reuse, and mixed approaches. Alternative selection included both cost and non-monetary considerations, based on the redevelopment priorities, and resulted in a plan that optimally met the HDOE’s goals.