After decades of ownership by the same family, two of Hilo’s most historic downtown properties have changed hands.
F. Koehnen Ltd., an 87-year-old family business currently headed by longtime Hilo businessman Fred J. Koehnen, sold on July 1 the 106-year-old Koehnen Building along with two adjacent properties on the mauka side jointly referred to as Koehnen’s Alley.
The company had owned the Koehnen Building and Koehnen’s Alley since 1956 and 1972, respectively. Fred. J. Koehnen, now 92, called the decision to sell bittersweet but inevitable — there are no family members interested in continuing the business, he said.
“Family businesses are a funny thing,” Koehnen said. “They very seldom go on for more than three generations because people have other interests. Ours just had no successors in sight.”
Both properties were sold to Giuseppe “Joe” Mamone of G.E.K. Mamone &Sons LLC.
Mamone is a Big Island native who, since 2012, has leased space in one of the properties to operate his custom flooring business.
Mamone told the Tribune-Herald he has no big changes planned in the immediate future, so long as the 16 current tenants “are good.”
“We’re going to keep things the same the best we can, the way the Koehnen family did,” Mamone said. “We’ll manage it the same way. We have the same bookkeeper and (property) manager, so we’re pretty much keeping things the same.”
Koehnen declined disclose the sale amount. Financial information is not yet available in the state Bureau of Conveyances or in county records. The sale was self-financed, Koehnen said, and F. Koehnen Ltd. will remain in existence until the mortgage is paid off.
The decision to sell perhaps marks the end of an era for the family, which set its roots in Hilo more than 100 years ago. Company founder F.W. “Fritz” Koehnen immigrated to the island from Germany in 1909, originally on a two-year employment contract with H. Hackfeld &Co. Back then, Fritz worked in the newly constructed Koehnen Building, built by Hackfeld in 1910.
In 1916, when the United States entered World War I, the building was confiscated by the government as an enemy-owned asset and sold to an Oahu company eventually named Amfac. Amfac moved out, however, following Hilo’s 1946 tsunami and the building stood vacant for several years.
In 1956, F. Koehnen Ltd. — managed at the time by Fred. J. Koehnen and his brother-in-law, Carl Rohner — purchased it to operate their growing giftware, jewelry and furniture store.
F. Koehnen Ltd. purchased Koehnen’s Alley — originally comprised of two separately owned properties — in 1972 from Victoria Ward &Co. of Honolulu. Fred Koehnen isn’t sure of the exact age, but believes Koehnen’s Alley also dates back to the early 20th century. The Alley once housed the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company.
Fred Koehnen said the July 1 sale wasn’t a sudden decision, but rather “evolved over several years.” The family closed the three-generation retail store, Koehnen’s Interiors, in 2012 after 83 years in business for similar reasons — a lack of successors.
Since the store’s closure, much of the more than 35,000-square-foot Koehnen Building has undergone various renovations. Since 2014, it’s been largely occupied by the Mokupapapa Discovery Center.
“We were really excited to get this place,” said Andy Collins, education programs coordinator for the center. “It was an opportune time. We were really looking to get out of our old location and we love the building … we’ve gotten a lot of comments from people who come to see the exhibit and remember the building and what it was like in their childhood. People start to cry — they’ll say, ‘Wow I remember this place, thank you for restoring it.’ So that wasn’t intended, but it’s been really neat.”
Koehnen called leasing to the Discovery Center “a match made in heaven.” Similarly, he said, he feels optimistic about the decision to sell to Mamone. He’s met over the years various developers who “would do god knows what” with the properties, and the family “didn’t want that to happen.”
”Over all those years, you develop animate feelings for inanimate objects,” Koehnen said. “And that’s kind of the way it was — that building was part of our life. It’s hard to overcome that, but practicality is such that you eventually have to, and you want to see it fall into good hands. And I think that’s happened in this case.”