Walk the upper level of Windward Mall today and you will pass the footprint where Macy's used to be. The store closed in 2023 and the building came down in early 2024, following Sears, which shut its doors back in April 2019 and eventually gave way to a Target that opened in 2022. Two of the mall's four original anchor spots have turned over in the last seven years, and the building itself now runs closer to Target, Ross Dress for Less, Planet Fitness, and Regal Cinemas than to the department-store mix that opened it decades ago.
Meanwhile, on a Saturday evening in June, more than a hundred vendors and thousands of people packed an 80,000-square-foot lot on Alaloa Street, directly across from the mall's own front doors. That is the Kaneohe Night Market, and its most recent installment ran June 20, 2026, from 4 to 9 p.m., free to attend, with food trucks, craft booths, and live sets stacked back to back. The mall lost a department store. The parking lot across the street gained a festival that outdraws it.
That is the story worth understanding if you live here: Kaneohe's commercial center of gravity has not disappeared, it has stepped outside the building.
What Actually Left the Mall
The pattern at Windward Mall is not a single closure, it is a sequence. Sears left first, in 2019, and the space sat until Target moved in three years later. Then Macy's, originally a Liberty House location before the brand changeover, closed in 2023 and was torn down in early 2024. According to the mall's own documented history, it is a 530,000-square-foot property owned by Kamehameha Schools and managed by Jones Lang LaSalle, and the anchor lineup that remains today is a mix of value retail, fitness, and entertainment rather than the department-store model the building was built around.
Planet Fitness filled part of that gap in 2025, taking a spot in the mall's evolving tenant mix. That is a fitness membership, not a retail draw that pulls foot traffic through a food court on a Tuesday afternoon. The mall is adapting, but it is adapting toward uses that do not necessarily bring people back to browse.
What's Actually Filling the Space
Two things inside the mall are working, and neither one is new retail.
The first is the Plenty of Aloha Farmers Market, which has run inside Windward Mall for 15 years on a fixed schedule: Wednesdays from 2:30 to 7:30 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., according to the state tourism authority's own listing. It is also, by most accounts, the only indoor, air-conditioned farmers market in the state, which matters more than it sounds like it should when you are comparing it to an outdoor market on a July afternoon. Fifteen years of consistent scheduling is not a promotion. It is proof that the format works regardless of what happens to the anchor stores around it.
The second is smaller but tells the same story: Tanaka Ramen & Izakaya recently opened inside the mall, adding to the dining options there. That is a real counterpoint to the idea that everything worth eating in Kaneohe is leaving the building. But it is a restaurant filling a food court tenant slot, not a retail anchor replacing a department store. The mall is holding onto food and recurring markets. It is not holding onto shopping in the way it used to.
Follow the Restaurant Money
If you want to see where new investment in Kaneohe's food scene is actually landing, look at the properties next to and around Windward Mall rather than inside it.
| Where | What opened | When |
|---|---|---|
| Inside Windward Mall | Tanaka Ramen & Izakaya | Recently |
| Kamehameha Highway, next to Fresh Catch | Popeyes, the chain's 8th Oahu location | May 2026 |
| Kaneohe Bay Shopping Center | East Side Bar & Grill, with live music nights and kupuna and military discounts | Established fixture |
The Popeyes opening is the freshest data point here. It opened next to Fresh Catch on Kamehameha Highway in May 2026 with two drive-through lanes, a format built for volume and speed rather than sit-down dining, and it is the eighth Popeyes location on the entire island. That is a chain betting on drive-through traffic on the Windward side's main commercial corridor, not on mall foot traffic.
East Side Bar & Grill, at Kaneohe Bay Shopping Center rather than Windward Mall itself, has built a recurring calendar around live entertainment several nights a week along with discount nights for kupuna and military members. It is a separate property from the mall, run by an owner with deep local roots in the area, and it points to the same pattern: new hospitality investment in Kaneohe is choosing standalone shopping centers and highway frontage over the enclosed mall format.
One Night in June Makes the Point
The clearest evidence that Kaneohe's commercial energy has moved outdoors is the Kaneohe Night Market itself. It runs in the lot across Alaloa Street from Windward Mall, not inside the building, and organizers describe it as one of the town's biggest recurring events. Recent installments have drawn well over a hundred vendors selling food, crafts, and art, with live music filling the schedule and lines at food trucks long enough that regulars plan around them.
Consider what that means spatially. The mall itself, with its remaining anchors and food court, sits on one side of Alaloa Street. The market that pulls the bigger, louder, more talked-about crowd happens in a parking lot on the other side. Kaneohe residents are not choosing between the mall and the market. They are treating the market as the main event and the mall as a backdrop.
What This Means If You Live Here
None of this means Windward Mall is disappearing. Target, Ross, Regal, and Planet Fitness are functioning anchors, and the farmers market inside the mall has fifteen years of proof that it works. But if you are mapping out where Kaneohe's actual commercial life happens week to week, the honest answer has split in two. The mall handles routine errands, movies, and a twice-weekly indoor market. The pavement around it, from the Alaloa Street lot to the Kaneohe Bay Shopping Center strip to the Kamehameha Highway drive-through corridor, is where the town's newer restaurant investment and its biggest single-night crowds are actually going.
That split is worth knowing because it changes how you plan a week here. If you are chasing what is new, you are not walking mall corridors anymore. You are checking a highway address for a fried chicken drive-through, a shopping center marquee for live music, or a June calendar date for a parking lot that turns into the town's biggest party for five hours.
Kaneohe is not losing its center. It just stopped being indoors.
If you are curious how these shifts in a neighborhood's daily rhythm connect to what is happening in its housing market, that is exactly the kind of local read The Oahuist tracks street by street across Oahu. Reach out any time you want a conversation about what is actually happening in Kaneohe, on the market side or otherwise.
