WAILUKU - The county is considering buying the old Wailuku Post Office for $1.5 million and converting the building into new office space.
Mayor Charmaine Tavares said she proposed the purchase after a study of county office space recommended acquiring the property and using it to expand the county's Wailuku campus. But the 1950s-era building is contaminated with asbestos and toxic mold, and the county would have to find a way to deal with those problems before deciding how to use the property, she said this week.
The county has been paying about $75,000 per year to lease the building in a contract that runs through 2026. Because of the contamination, the building was previously used only for storage. But last year the county cleaned and removed thousands of documents and files, and since then it has been sitting empty.
County departments have been short of office space for years, with workers packed in close quarters, and the county spending millions of dollars each year to rent additional space in office buildings around Wailuku and Kahului.
Tavares said an independent appraisal set the value of the property at about $1.5 million, and the county had tentatively accepted an offer to buy it at that price.
"It makes sense for the county to take it over," Tavares said.
She requested funding for the acquisition in her fiscal year 2010 budget proposal, which is being reviewed by the Maui County Council. Tavares would also need council approval to go ahead with the purchase.
The old Wailuku Post Office is at the corner of South High and Wells streets and sits on an 18,924-square-foot lot. The property is owned by Honolulu-based Kalama Land Co.
When the county cleared out the building last year, officials from the Mayor's Office said Tavares was not considering an offer to buy the property for $2 million, because of the high cost to clean up the contaminated building.
She said a space-utilization study completed last year recommended buying the property and using it for a new office building.
If the county goes ahead with the purchase now, Tavares said, the next step would be to conduct a study to determine whether to rehabilitate and expand on the existing structure or "demolish it all and start over."
"No matter what, we'll have to deal with the asbestos problem," she said.
While Tavares noted Wailuku development guidelines would prevent the county from building another "monstrosity" like the nine-story Kalana O Maui Building, she said she'd like to see something larger than the existing two-story post office.
"We want to maximize the space there," she said.
* Ilima Loomis can be reached at iloomis@mauinews.com.
