Pearlridge Center is a shopping mall on Moanalua Road in Waimalu, Hawaii, built as two separate buildings. They don't touch. An elevated monorail crosses the gap between them.
The first building opened in 1972. The second went up beyond the working watercress farm in 1975. Pearlridge added the 0.2-mile shuttle between the buildings two years later.
The two halves were called Uptown and Downtown for decades and are signed Mauka and Wai Makai now. A 2019 renovation changed the names and the finishes. The buildings stayed where they were.
Pearlridge is still open in 2026. Court-appointed receivers control most of the floor area, and the old Sears store is empty. The farm between the buildings is still growing watercress.
Watercress on five leased acres
In 1928 Makiyo and Moriichi Sumida began farming leased land at Kalauao Springs in Aiea. They didn't own the five acres.
The land belonged to Kamehameha Schools, and the Sumidas farmed it on a lease. The operation expanded and stayed in the family.
Four decades later Kaonohi Center Company assembled a regional shopping center on the same flat ground near what became the H-1 corridor, and much of what it built went up on long-term ground leases tied to the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Estate, which is Kamehameha Schools.
The mall and the farm were tenants of one estate, on adjoining pieces of it.
Plans came forward during the development years that would have paved the watercress under.
The farm's operator refused them, and the beds stayed in production while the shopping center went up on either side.
By 2026, the Sumida operation covered about 10 acres, sitting in the middle of the mall.
Liberty House opened before the mall
Liberty House opened in late October 1971, and there was no mall around it yet.
The store ran 109,000 square feet over two levels. The first 2,000 shoppers got Pink Pearl flowering plants.
Inside, four mannequins rode through the two-story escalator well in a pair of Plexiglas display capsules.
Then it traded on its own for more than six months.
The mall that eventually opened around it is Pearlridge Center, a regional shopping center at 98-1005 Moanalua Road in Waimalu, Hawaii, near Pearl Harbor and the H-1 freeway.
It opened in 1972 as an enclosed mall anchored by Liberty House and J.C. Penney.
It's still open in 2026, and its two halves, known for decades as Uptown and Downtown, are signed today as Mauka and Wai Makai.
J.C. Penney opened on May 16, 1972, with about 102,900 square feet, a coffee shop, a beauty salon, and an auto center outside the building.
Inline merchants started opening that June, and Phase I was dedicated on August 9, 1972: roughly 650,000 square feet, about 90 merchants once it filled.
In the central atrium, seating took the shape of the mall's colored arch motif.
Smaller versions of the same arches hung above the corridors. All of it stood on one side of the farm.
Phase II went up on the far side
Phase II opened across the farm in fall 1975 with Longs Drugs in about 26,000 square feet. Parking took much of the lowest level and covered the roof.
Construction had started on May 16, 1974, and Sears opened its freestanding two-level store later that year with roughly 220,000 square feet of selling area.
Daiei came with it.
The Japanese retailer had opened its first store outside Japan at Pearlridge in November 1972, 17,000 square feet in Phase I. It closed that one on October 31, 1975, and opened 120,000 square feet across three levels in the new building 18 days later.
The route ran roughly 0.2 mile between two stations, one at roof level on Phase I and the other on the third level of Phase II.
Rohr Industries supplied the air-conditioned cars, and Pearlridge opened the elevated shuttle on November 7, 1977.
Until then, the two buildings stood apart with the farm between them, leaving shoppers to cross at ground level.
Pearlridge built a railway because it had no hallway.
Pearlridge became two places
Daiei's big store lasted a decade.
The company bought Holiday Mart in Hawaii in 1980, and in 1986 it closed the Pearlridge superstore, emptying three floors of the newer building.
Shirokiya had arrived around 1981 and stayed about 20 years.
By then the two buildings had picked up names of their own.
From 1996, shoppers called Phase I Uptown and Phase II Downtown, because there was no single building to name and the monorail ran between them.
The strip and convenience sections got directional Pearlridge names too.
Pearlridge was close to the biggest mall in the state by then.
In 1996 it had 1.4 million square feet of leasable area on 56 acres, 170 stores, and 6,600 parking spaces, against Ala Moana's 1.5 million square feet and 200 stores.
Pearlridge was within 100,000 square feet of it and still couldn't be walked end to end.
The Penney building leaves Pearlridge
J.C. Penney closed on January 10, 2003, and the closure affected about 150 employees.
Nothing replaced it as a department store, and by then the building wasn't Pearlridge's to refill: Inspiration Furniture had bought it from Kin Properties in November 2002 and taken control that February.
The old Penney shell was rebuilt as Uptown II, breaking roughly 130,000 square feet into a mix of smaller shops and larger tenant spaces.
Borders opened there in October 2005, with Price Busters becoming another anchor.
Borders closed in September 2011, and Ross moved into its former space in October 2013.
Reciprocal easements tie Uptown II to the neighboring Pearlridge parcels and let the properties operate as one shopping center.
The 9.3-acre leasehold carries a separate loan, and its ground lease dates to 1970 and expires April 30, 2043.
Uptown II totals 154,944 square feet across the three-story retail building connected to Pearlridge and a freestanding building, with 739 surface parking spaces.
Two receivers and a lease ending in 2043
Sears closed in 2021, 47 years after it opened, and the building has had no announced replacement since.
Two loans came due in 2025 and neither was paid.
Uptown II's matured on May 1 and went to special servicing the next day, when the borrower couldn't refinance.
The $225 million loan on a 903,700-square-foot portion of the center reached maturity in June.
A court approved a receivership over that collateral in December 2025, a receiver was appointed for Uptown II on February 13, 2026, and CBRE is the receiver on the larger collateral and the property manager and leasing agent for Uptown II.
In February 2026, that mortgaged portion was 74.9 percent occupied, against 95.6 percent when the loan closed in 2015.
That's the collateral, not the whole center.
The transit around the mall improved over the same years.
Skyline's first segment opened on June 30, 2023 with a station at Kalauao Pearlridge, and the second reached the airport on October 16, 2025.
Honolulu adopted a development plan in April 2025 that treats the mall area as a site for housing, with scenarios adding 1,000 to 3,000 homes if large parts of the center were rebuilt.
No owner has approval to do that. Pearlridge is still open.
Planet Fitness opened in November 2025, the monorail structure still crosses between the buildings and still appears in the leasing material, and the Satellite City Hall in Suite 244B still renews driver's licenses Monday to Friday.
The receiver leasing Uptown II is filling a building whose ground lease ends in 2043.
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