Aina Haina update coming tonight

There is an Aina Haina a community meeting tonight at Aina Haina school, where a representative from thereal estate investment company that bought the Aina Haina Shopping will give us an update on their plans.

The Advertiser reported today that Marvin Lotz, the president of the company said, "I think the center is out of date. I think it needs to be renovated. We want to restore this center to the prominence it once enjoyed. But we're not coming in and changing the environment."

The center is 58-year-old. Two more tenants have been told their leases won't be renewed — the 76 service station will move out in early 2009, and Chuck E. Cheese's will close at the shopping complex in December, and my kids are in a serious depression over it.

"Company officials said they envision major upgrades, including new store fronts and signage, changing the facade of the buildings, putting in a food court and reshaping the parking area to include a greenbelt. But Lotz said yesterday it's too early to speculate about how much money will be spent on the remodel and when it will be completed."

What we have to realize is that whether we like the changes or not, the center needs to be renovated. And for someone to spend several million dollars doing that, they need to have some potential of getting that back, in the form of higher rents and revenues.

So while I'm very sad about Chuck E Cheese's, I'm sure the renovations will be good for our neigborhood and our values. The people who are going to keep our values up around a million dollars in Aina Haina are the ones who want nice new shopping centers.