In 2008 negotiations to purchase the land began with Citibank and the haggling continued for several months until the ERS finally acquired the property in 2009 for $7.4 million. The land under the 360-space parking facility was owned by Kamehameha Schools, an operating unit of the $7 billion Bernice Pauahi Bishop Estate.Ĭity Financial Tower in downtown Honolulu, May 2014.įor 20 years, the ERS dutifully made annual ground lease payments to Citibank and Kamehameha Schools. That was owned by Citibank Properties, a subsidiary of Central Pacific Financial Corp., the holding company for Central Pacific Bank, which had acquired the real estate through a merger with CB Bancshares, the parent of City Bank.
The pension fund purchased the building, now its headquarters, for $68 million in March 1989, just a few months before it officially opened.īut one thing the ERS didn’t own was the ground underneath the building and its parking garage. The ERS has owned the shiny 24-story building at 201 Merchant Street for the past quarter century, one of the last structures designed by renowned World Trade Center architect Minoru Yamasaki before his death in 1986. That’s a situation facing trustees of the Hawaii Employees’ Retirement System – with one exception: City Financial Tower in downtown Honolulu. When you own real estate worth $892 million it’s almost impossible to visit every piece of property on a regular basis.
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