KOLOA — In some parts of the Historic Koloa Plantation Building on Poipu Road here, one can meet with real-estate professionals ready and willing to sell homes, condominiums, vacant lands or businesses on the South Shore and elsewhere.
Take a few steps down the renovated corridor of the former Koloa Dispensary medical clinic, and other professionals stand ready to assist with buyer financing and opening of escrow accounts.
While land owner Betsy Toulon didn’t necessarily envision a one-stop, real-estate shop when she and her family decided to redevelop the parcel, that’s what she and they got.
And a bit more.
The Historic Koloa Plantation Building is home to businesses new and expanding, including Regency Pacific Realty; Z&M, Ltd., doing business as Turtle Cove Realty; and RE/MAX; all real-estate companies.
The same building also houses Fidelity National Title & Escrow and Title Guaranty Escrow, companies offering title searches and escrow accounts for buyers of properties.
Aloha Financial is also tucked inside the building, offering quick loans especially for real-estate transactions.
Poipu Ocean View Resorts, Buff Toulon’s property-management company, and Touch Screen Hawaii, a company offering visitor information and other services through touch-screen monitors in shopping centers and other locations, have also set up offices in the building.
In the right-hand corner of the new building as you face it from the street is RE/MAX, whose owner and principal broker, James G. “Jim” Pycha, makes the nearly daily drive from Princeville to oversee operations of his new South Shore office.
While it was the desire of Kauai Historical Society representatives and Toulon and Knudsen family members to restore the dispensary building, age, termites and rot had taken too much of a toll for that to be possible, Pycha said.
Under the guidance of architect Avery Youn, the building was meticulously rebuilt, plantation-style, with only the requisite handicapped-accessibility additions making for a slightly different look than the original building, erected in the 1920s.
Large photos of old Koloa, also from the 1920s and ‘30s, adorn the walls of the RE/MAX offices.
Like other real-estate professionals in the building, Pycha is certain there is enough long-term business along the South Shore to sustain the island’s current real-estate boom well into the foreseeable future.
With the 1,000-acre Kukui‘ula development underway just down the road from the new offices, much vacant land becoming available as a result of dissolution of the Knudsen trust, and increasing demand for Kaua‘i real estate, Pycha sees these “elements” leading to a “horizon shining” for Kaua‘i real-estate professionals and “tangent businesses.”
Kukui‘ula, he pointed out, is “bigger than Princeville.” He should know, since the Princeville RE/MAX office he also owns and operates as principal broker specializes in Princeville parcels, while also managing rentals on 60 North Shore properties.
He figures it will only be a matter of time before RE/MAX gets into the property-management business on the South Shore as well.
When design for the new RE/MAX Koloa office was initially considered, Pycha was looking for something different.
Enlisting the help of Susan Kubecka, a Kilauea-based interior designer and one of the few Kauaians selected for membership in the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), they came up with something dramatically different.
The front office resembles a living room, where clients in couch comfort can browse through available listings on a 42-inch color monitor mounted on the wall.
From that relaxed setting, agents can call listing agents to arrange to view in person properties prospective buyers are interested in seeing, he said.
The power of computers enables agent and client to get detailed information on properties, including square footage, tax-map keys, proximity to schools, shopping, beaches and other amenities, and other data, which can all be viewed on the big screen.
Client-agent rapport happens in a relaxed, comfortable, accommodating setting, he explained.
For her efforts, Kubecka has been invited to submit her design for consideration for Hawai‘i ASID awards.
Business Editor Paul C. Curtis can be reached at pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
