If your Waikiki hotel is on the Ena Road end of town, there is now a demolition site on the street that will be fenced through February 2027. The good news, as far as we can tell: the city says the work stays inside standard construction hours, and it is being done by small remote-controlled robots rather than a big crane. We read the three notices the city has posted about it so far, and our honest call is that most visitors will not notice it at all. A few will, and they can do something simple about it.
What happened
The City and County of Honolulu is tearing down the former Ena Motoi building at 436 Ena Road, a vacant eight-story, 33-unit building the city owns. In an Oct. 30 release, the city’s Department of Housing and Land Management (DHLM) said contractor R.H.S. Lee, Inc. begins structural demolition the week of Nov. 2, 2026, and that demolition and site clearing are expected to continue through February 2027. Mayor Rick Blangiardi and DHLM Director Kevin Auger held a ceremonial demolition event on Friday, Oct. 30, to show off the machines.
The machines are Husqvarna demolition robots, which the city describes as built to dismantle structures in confined spaces while the operators stand farther away. A city notice from Oct. 26 names the model as a DXR 305.
Aloha State Daily, which covered the event, adds the part we found most interesting. According to Auger, the robots are compact enough to go up the elevator shafts, and debris is loaded into the elevator shaft, because the site has no room for large trucks or a large crane. The same report says the mayor made the first swipes at the building himself with the remote.
The lot is small, roughly 6,000 square feet with the building and a detached parking structure, per the city. The plan is permanently affordable housing, but the city says the final unit count and affordability levels are not set, and community engagement, environmental review, and land use approvals still come first.
What it changes for a Waikiki stay
For most people, nothing. Here is what the city has actually put in writing, side by side:
| Question | What the city says | Source |
|---|---|---|
| When does the building come down? | Structural demolition starts week of Nov. 2, 2026 | Oct. 30 release |
| How long? | Demolition and site clearing through February 2027 | Oct. 30 release |
| What hours? | ”Standard construction hours” (no clock times given) | Oct. 6 and Oct. 30 |
| Fencing? | Safety fencing for the whole project | Oct. 6 and Oct. 30 |
| Sidewalks? | May be temporarily closed as needed | Oct. 26 notice |
| Traffic lanes? | Not mentioned | — |
| Noise or dust measures? | Not mentioned | — |
Two things are worth knowing. First, the dates moved a little. The city’s Oct. 6 notice had full demolition starting the week of Oct. 26; the Oct. 30 release says the week of Nov. 2. The February 2027 end stayed the same. Second, none of the city pages give actual start and stop times, so we cannot tell you whether the first noise is at 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. We are not going to guess.
Ena Road is on the west (Ewa) end of Waikiki, on the Hilton Hawaiian Village side, not the middle stretch of Kalakaua Avenue where most people spend their beach days. We have walked that street before; we once ate pho at a Vietnamese restaurant at 478 Ena Rd. But we cannot place this particular building from memory, so treat our sense of the block as general, not street-level.
What we’d do — and what we wouldn’t
We wouldn’t rebook anything. Work the city keeps to standard construction hours, on one small lot, by machines small enough to ride an elevator shaft, is not a reason to move hotels.
If your hotel is right on that corner, we’d ask for a room facing away from it. We already ask for a room away from Kalakaua on most stays, because street noise is the thing we notice most in Waikiki, sirens and traffic included. One line in the booking notes or at check-in, “a room on the side away from the construction on Ena Road, please,” costs nothing. We don’t drink late or stay out, and we are often back in the room by mid-afternoon with the windows open, so daytime noise matters more to us than to people out all day. If you are out at the beach from 9 to 5, you may never hear it.
On foot, we’d just cross the street. We don’t rent a car, so lane closures would not touch us anyway, and the city has not announced any. A temporarily closed sidewalk on one block means walking on the other side. If you push a stroller or use a wheelchair, that is the one group we would tell to look at the site on the first day and pick a route, rather than finding the closed stretch with a full bag of groceries.
If you drive, the city has not said anything about lanes, so we would not plan around it. Keep an eye out for the fencing and any flaggers on Ena Road itself.
Before you plan around this
- Our dates and details come from the city’s Oct. 6, Oct. 26, and Oct. 30 pages, checked Nov. 2, 2026. Construction schedules slip; the city has already moved the start once.
- The elevator-shaft method, the no-crane reason, and the mayor at the controls are as reported by Aloha State Daily, quoting Auger. The city’s own release does not describe the method in that detail.
- What gets built afterward is open. EAH Housing still has a project page for a 29-story, 125-home building with construction estimated for 2029, but Aloha State Daily reports that Auger said the partnership with EAH has since dissolved and the project will be rebid, with the city aiming to issue that request by the end of the year. Read the EAH numbers as a past proposal, not the plan.
- The building’s backstory, if you are curious: Honolulu Civil Beat reported in 2023 that the city bought it in 2018 for $7.5 million and moved the last 12 tenants out in early 2023 after deciding repairs were too extensive.
- For exact work hours or access questions, DHLM lists (808) 768-4277 and, on its Oct. 6 notice, [email protected].
If you are staying in the middle of Waikiki, file this under “nice to know.” If you are staying on Ena Road, add one sentence to your booking notes and get on with the beach.
