Shimogawa Scoops

June Jones, the former head coach of the University of Hawaii football team during the program’s greatest seasons, is part of a group of local and Mainland investors planning to redevelop the iconic Wo Fat Building in Honolulu’s Chinatown into a 23-room hotel along with retail and restaurants, Shimogawa Scoops has learned. The planned project, which would be the first hotel in Chinatown, is expected to cost about $10 million, according to public documents. The Mighty Union, which does hotels, restaurants, bars and other projects, is expected to be the operator of the new project. The preservation and adaptive reuse project is located near a future rail transit station and will include a restaurant/bar, retail, reception and lobby on the ground floor. The second and third floors will include hotel rooms and there also may be a rooftop bar and equipment room. The project’s design team includes Clayton & Little Architects, Dean Sakamoto Architects LLC and SHADE. T...

It’s not Olive Garden, but a new Italian restaurant is set to open in Honolulu in the former long-vacant Genki Sushi space along busy Kapahulu Avenue, Shimogawa Scoops has learned. Rigoletto Hawaii has filed a $1.5 million building permit with Honolulu regulators to open a new restaurant at 885 Kapahulu Avenue. Hiroto Suzuki of the Wanderlust Plus architecture firm is the architect for the project. His restaurant work includes Piggy Smalls, Tempura Ichidai, Gokoku Sushi, Café Lani and Koa Restaurant. The new, 3,653-square-foot Rigoletto Hawaii restaurant is expected to bring new life to that building, which has been vacant for more than a couple of years after Genki Sushi relocated across the street to the Safeway-anchored shopping center on Kapahulu Avenue.