Ask anyone who has lived in Kaneohe for more than a decade what they think of Windward Mall, and you'll get some version of the same story: the anchor stores left one by one, the upper level got quiet, and the place turned into somewhere you park for a movie and leave. That story made sense for a while. Sears closed in April 2019. Macy's, which had been Liberty House before that, shut its doors in 2023 and was demolished the following year. Two department store anchors, gone inside five years, in a 530,000-square-foot mall that Kamehameha Schools has owned and Jones Lang LaSalle has managed through the whole stretch.
Here's what that story leaves out. Look at what actually moved into those two spaces, and what's grown up around them while the obituary was still being written.
The Anchor Swap Nobody Bothered to Interpret
When Sears left, Target took the space in 2022. When Macy's came down, Planet Fitness opened on the site in late 2025. Two department stores, built around browsing and buying things you didn't need that day, replaced by two anchors built around errands and routine. That's not a downgrade. It's a different bet about what a Kaneohe resident actually wants to do on a Tuesday.
| Anchor era | What it offered |
|---|---|
| Sears (closed 2019), Macy's (closed 2023) | Department store shopping, seasonal sales, browsing |
| Target (2022), Planet Fitness (2025), Ross Dress for Less, Regal Cinemas | Groceries and essentials, a gym membership, discount apparel, a movie |
Nobody planned this as a rebrand. It happened one lease at a time. But the direction is consistent: the mall stopped competing for shoppers who might drive to Ala Moana for a bigger selection, and started competing for people who live within a few miles and need somewhere to be twice a week, not twice a year.
The Farmers Market That Quietly Became the Best in the State
The clearest evidence of who Windward Mall is actually building for isn't a store at all. It's the Plenty of Aloha Farmers Market, which runs inside the mall every Wednesday from 2 to 6 p.m. and every Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., spread across both levels.
A few things about this market are easy to miss if you've only ever walked through it on the way to the food court:
- It's the only indoor, air-conditioned farmers market in Hawaii, which matters more than it sounds on a Windward side afternoon when the rain rolls in off the Koolau range without warning.
- It runs more than 50 small businesses on a given day, nine of them local farmers, alongside vendors selling honey, smoked fish, poi, and baked goods.
- The American Farmland Trust has ranked it the number one farmers market in Hawaii for two consecutive years, and it placed ninth nationally in the 2025 America's Farmers Market Celebration, a vote that drew more than 97,000 entries across over 1,500 markets nationwide.
- It marked its 15th anniversary in November 2024, which means this market predates most of the retail turnover happening around it.
Windward Mall's senior general manager, Cesar Topacio, and Plenty of Aloha owner Nicole Smythe have both talked about the market less as a retail tenant and more as the thing the mall is actually known for now. That's a strange thing for a shopping center to admit, and also the most honest read of the last few years. The market isn't propped up by the mall. If anything, it's the other way around.
A Ramen Counter With a Yakitori Menu You Can't Order Anywhere Else in Hawaii
The newest arrival makes the same point from the food side. Tanaka Ramen & Izakaya opened its seventh Hawaii location inside Windward Mall on May 13, 2026, in a 2,400-square-foot space near Ninja Sushi and HawaiiUSA Federal Credit Union, with seating for around 70 guests.
What's worth knowing if you haven't been yet: this is the only Tanaka Ramen location in the state offering a full yakitori stick menu, including chicken thigh with green onion and chicken meatball skewers, a detail the company built specifically for the Windward opening rather than importing from its other six locations. Owner Tina Wang has said the chain's growth since launching in 2020 has been driven by community support rather than a broader expansion strategy, and the Windward Mall build-out fits that pattern. It isn't a flagship trying to draw people across the island. It's a neighborhood spot with one menu item you can't get anywhere else, which is exactly the kind of detail that turns a mall restaurant into a reason to stop by on a Thursday instead of just grabbing something on the way home.
One Night in June That Didn't Belong to the Mall at All
Not everything new is happening under the mall's roof. On Saturday, June 20, 2026, the Kaneohe Night Market took over an 80,000-square-foot lot across the street on Alaloa Street, running from 4 to 9 p.m. with food, drinks, and entertainment for families. It was a free event, and organizers set up offsite parking at King Street with a trolley shuttle to handle the crowd, which tells you something about how many people they expected to show up on foot or by car and needed somewhere to put them.
The mall didn't run this event. But its presence across the street, and the fact that it's now surrounded by enough weeknight and weekend draw to fill an adjacent lot, is part of the same shift. Windward Mall isn't the only reason to be in that stretch of Kamehameha Highway anymore. It's one node in a small cluster of reasons, which is a healthier position for a mall that spent years being the only reason.
What the Swap Actually Adds Up To
None of this reads as a comeback story if you're looking for a comeback story. There's no new wing, no glossy renovation announcement, no headline anchor tenant everyone's been waiting for. What happened instead is quieter and, for anyone who actually lives nearby, more useful: a department store mall became an errand-and-routine hub, almost by accident, through a string of individually small decisions. A gym instead of a Macy's. A ramen counter with one dish you can't find anywhere else. A farmers market that turned out to be better than markets in places with far more foot traffic and far more press.
If you've been avoiding Windward Mall because of what it used to be, that version is a few years out of date. The mall that exists now was built, tenant by tenant, for people who are already here and plan to keep being here, not for people passing through.
That's the same read we apply to the neighborhoods around it. Kaneohe doesn't change because of one big announcement. It changes because a dozen small, unremarkable decisions point the same direction long enough that you notice. If you're trying to make sense of what's actually happening in this part of windward Oahu, whether that's a mall reinventing itself or a block quietly turning over, Homes of Hawai'i Real Estate has been watching it happen in real time. Reach out when you're ready to talk about what it means for you.
