PF Bentley | Honolulu Civil Beat

Taller buildings aren’t just coming to Kakaako, and that’s mostly thanks to rail.

New city plans call for increasing building height limits around future rail stations as a means to spur development.

In fact, some areas could see buildings as tall as 450 feet, or about 100 feet taller than the maximum current city zoning laws allow.

It’s part of Honolulu’s push for transit-oriented development, a planning principle that seeks to gentrify neighborhoods, increase density and make communities more pedestrian-friendly.

Honolulu is in the process of developing new planning and zoning rules specifically for transit-oriented development, or TOD, as it is commonly referred.

But these rules won’t be completed for more than a year, and developers are getting antsy. {….}