Ask a longtime Kāneʻohe resident what they think of Windward Mall and you will likely hear about the ghost-town years. The empty Sears box. The Macy's that felt like it might never come down. The general sense that Windward Mall on Kamehameha Highway was a place you passed through for Target and Ross, not a place you lingered.
That reputation was accurate for a while. It is not accurate now, and the reason has less to do with any single new tenant than with a decision Kamehameha Schools made about how to handle the second anchor vacancy differently than the first.
The Sears Space Sat For Three Years
Sears closed its Windward Mall store on April 30, 2019. The space did not reopen as anything until Target moved in during 2022, a gap of roughly three years during which the building sat as unfinished business in the middle of the mall. That stretch is the version of Windward Mall that shaped the reputation many residents still carry: a mall waiting on a decision nobody was making fast.
Macy's Got A Different Response
Macy's closed in 2023 as part of a national round of store closures. This is where the pattern could have repeated. Instead, Kamehameha Schools filed a demolition permit and tore the building down in early 2024, then built a new anchor structure on the site specifically designed to be leased to new tenants rather than waiting for a single big-box replacement. Planet Fitness opened there in late 2025, roughly two years after Macy's closed and about a year and a half after the old building came down.
That is a meaningfully shorter turnaround than the Sears vacancy, and it reflects a different strategy. Rather than treating an empty department store as one long-term problem, ownership chose demolition and purpose-built construction, which let the site come back online faster and gave the mall more flexibility for whatever came next. For a resident deciding whether the mall is still worth a stop, that difference in approach matters more than the square footage of any single new gym.
| Anchor Space | Closed | Reopened | Approx. Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sears | April 30, 2019 | 2022 (Target) | ~3 years |
| Macy's | 2023 | Late 2025 (Planet Fitness) | ~2 years |
What's Actually Open This Month
Numbers on a timeline only mean something if the storefronts behind them are alive day to day. Windward Mall's own September posts give a real snapshot of that, not a highlight reel from years ago:
- Buffalo Wild Wings Kāneʻohe, running football-season specials
- Noods Ramen Bar, part of the mall's food court lineup
- Aloha Salads, serving lunch crowds
- GameStop, marking National Video Game Day with new releases
- Kay Jewelers, still anchoring the jewelry corner
- Papa John's, in on National Cheese Pizza Day promotions
None of these are dramatic openings. That is the point. A mall that is actually functioning does not need a grand reopening every month. It needs ordinary restaurants and stores posting ordinary specials on an ordinary Tuesday, which is exactly what Windward Mall's feed has been doing through September.
The Mall Also Doubles As A Gym Floor And A Farmers Market
Two things happen inside Windward Mall that have nothing to do with retail traffic counts. Since 2024, the mall has hosted the finals of the Hawaii Club Volleyball Championship, a statewide youth tournament organized by the nonprofit 7Gen Culture, played out in a center-court setting inside the mall rather than at a standalone gym. It is an unusual use of mall real estate, and it says something about how ownership sees the space now, less as pure retail square footage and more as a venue the Windward side can actually use.
The mall has also run its Plenty of Aloha Farmer's Market for the past 15 years, an indoor Sunday fixture that predates most of the recent turnover and has kept running through all of it. If you have never gone, it is worth knowing it is there before assuming the mall's only draw is the movie theater.
Windward Community College Is Doing Its Part Next Door
Walk a few minutes from the mall and you hit Palikū Theatre at Windward Community College, which has quietly become a stop on a national touring concert circuit. On September 5, 2026, the theater hosted three separate Candlelight tribute concerts in a single evening: The Best of Joe Hisaishi, Coldplay vs. Imagine Dragons, and a Bruno Mars tribute. On September 17, the venue is hosting The Jury Experience. This is not community theater filler. It is the same touring concert series that plays the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Honolulu, choosing to book Kāneʻohe as its own stop rather than treating it as overflow.
A few blocks over, Windward City Shopping Center runs its recurring 2nd Saturdays event, with the next one landing September 12. None of this requires a drive into town.
Two Blocks Of Kāneʻohe That Don't Need Honolulu
Put the pieces next to each other and a pattern shows up that a single "mall is back" headline would miss. The anchor rebuild wasn't a one-off fix, it was a faster version of the same process the mall went through with Sears, done on purpose this time. The current tenant mix isn't a temporary bounce, it's been steady enough to fill an entire month of ordinary social posts. The volleyball finals and the farmers market show the building being used as a gathering spot, not just a strip of stores. And Palikū Theatre next door is booking the same national tour that plays Honolulu's biggest venues.
None of that erases the years the mall spent half-empty. But if your mental picture of Windward Mall is still the one from the Sears-to-Target gap, it is a few years out of date. The corner of Kamehameha Highway and Alaloa Street has spent the last two years rebuilding faster than it fell apart, and this September that shows up in the ordinary things happening there right now, not in a press release.
If you're weighing what a corner like this means for a home nearby, whether it changes daily errands, weekend plans, or resale appeal down the road, Don Dietz has spent 30 years watching how these Windward pockets shift and can walk you through what it actually means for your address. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
