Father Khanh Hoang, center, pastor of St. Jude Church in Makakilo, tours with project managers part of the 11-acre land parcel acquired by the parish Oct. 17. (HCH photos by Darlene Dela Cruz)
A new church building and other facilities will be built on the site, which lies at the corner of Fort Barrette Road and Kamaaha Avenue. The land parcel is about a five-minute drive from the current St. Jude Church location at 92-455 Makakilo Drive.
Good news for St. Jude Church in Makakilo, which has been bursting at the seams ever since it was built 15 years ago. It’s getting a bigger place.
The parish just bought one-fourth of a 40-acre block less than five minutes away in the heart of Kapolei. It will be the site of a new and bigger church and other proper parish facilities that can’t fit on its present 3.7-acre location.
The new 11-acre site at the southwest corner of Kamaaha Avenue and Fort Barrette Road. Filling in the rest of the block will be Leihano, a mixed-use area that will include a senior living community, retail shops, a hotel and homes.
The land was acquired Oct. 17 for an undisclosed price from KSL Leihano Holdings II, LLC, an affiliate of Kisco Senior Living which is building the senior facility and is also the master developer for the rest of the site.
Financing was secured through Bank of Hawaii.
The old parish was created to serve the Makakilo area before Kapolei exploded as Oahu’s “second city” leaving the church inadequate for the thousands of new residences that sprouted up south of the freeway and the thousands more yet to be built.
“The amount of growth is really incredible,” said Father Khanh Hoang, St. Jude’s pastor.
The present church has “no office space, no social hall, no classrooms,” he said. “And parking is a big issue.”
The parish has 2,500 registered families.
About 1,800 people attend the parish’s five weekend Masses, Father Hoang said, with the 11 a.m. Sunday liturgy being standing room only. The church holds 500.
The church also serves as a classroom for the parish’s 280 religious education students and the meeting place for the outreach ministry which provides food for 1,000 people a month. Seven parish staff squeeze into three offices. The pastor lives “off-campus” about a mile from the church.
The new site, besides allowing for a bigger church, will have more parking and office space, a meeting hall, classrooms and a rectory.
The parish expects to launch a capital campaign next October and begin construction by 2020.
Whether or not the parish will sell the old site “depends on how the capital campaign goes,” said Father Hoang. “If it goes well, we would like to keep it. It is a good location.”
St. Jude Parish got its start in 1967 when a group of Makakilo Catholics began planning for a church in Makakilo, a district that was then part of Immaculate Conception Church in Ewa.
In the 1970s, the pastor of Immaculate Conception began celebrating Sunday Masses at the Makakilo Elementary School cafeteria. In 1985, the St. Jude Society, as the community was called, became a mission of the Ewa church.
Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario established St. Jude Parish on Feb. 1, 1988, naming Father James Berry as pastor. The parish covered the areas of Makakilo, Honokai Hale and Barbers Point. Masses were celebrated at the Makakilo Recreation Center.
In 1989, land was purchased at 92-455 Makakilo Drive and construction began the following year. The new church was dedicated on Feb. 14, 1999.
A 2010 diocesan study projected the population growth of Catholics in west Oahu to increase 28 percent by 2035. For St. Jude Parish alone, the increase is predicted to be close to 50 percent.
The diocese for several years has been on the lookout for land in the rapidly developing Kapolei area. In late 2012, it entered into final negotiations to buy 39.3 acres from the University of Hawaii in Honouliuli on Oahu’s Ewa plain adjacent to the University of Hawaii-West Oahu campus, but the deal fell through.
The land, which had not publically been designated for any particular parish, was located roughly midway between St. Jude Church and Immaculate Conception Church in Ewa.
