Waikoloa Village Has Two Shopping Centers. Here's What's Actually New at Each

Drive up Waikoloa Road from the highway and you pass both of them inside of two minutes, one on each side of the street. If you tell a friend to meet you at "the shopping center" in Waikoloa Village, you have already lost them, because there are two, they sit across from each other, and at least one restaurant has lived in both.

That restaurant is Pueo's Osteria. An archived 2020 leasing update on the shopping center's buildout noted that the Italian spot was relocating from Waikoloa Highlands Center to the newer Waikoloa Plaza going up across the street. Today, Pueo's current OpenTable listing confirms the Chef James Babian-led restaurant now sits at Waikoloa Plaza, with what its own listing calls ample free parking and designated pickup stalls. If you have directions to Pueo's saved from a few years back, they point you at the wrong building.

That small relocation is a decent stand-in for the bigger pattern. Waikoloa Village isn't one commercial strip, it's two, built a decade apart, aging differently, and easy to mix up if you don't know which one you're talking about.

The older side: Waikoloa Highlands Center

This is the center most longtime residents mean when they say "the shopping center," full stop. It sits at 68-1845 Waikoloa Road, anchored by KTA Super Stores, and runs 71,912 square feet according to the leasing profile from Pacific Castle, the firm that manages it. First Hawaiian Bank has a branch here, and this is also where Morningwood set up shop, a family-run breakfast and brunch spot open daily from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Its own description on Yelp calls it a neighborhood gathering place built around wood-fired touches and specialty Kona coffee, and the space it took over is the same corner of the center Pueo's vacated when it moved across the road.

If you've lived here long enough to remember when this was the only real option for a sit-down meal without driving down to Kona, this is still that center. It just has a new name behind one of its counters.

The newer side: Waikoloa Plaza

Across the street at 68-1820 Waikoloa Road sits Waikoloa Plaza, developed by Meridian Pacific on a roughly 47-acre site the company bought in 2018 for $24 million. The core plaza opened in July 2023, and it's where Ace Hardware anchors a growing lineup of daily-needs tenants, alongside Pueo's new address and SmashDaddy's 808, a hand-smashed burger spot that Pacific Business News reported had just opened at the plaza in January 2025.

What isn't open yet is the part everyone actually asks about. Developer Gary Pinkston told West Hawaii Today in February 2025 that a Foodland supermarket and a Starbucks were both anticipated for 2026. As of this writing, neither has a confirmed opening date beyond that. The same reporting listed a cluster of eateries still in the pipeline with no set timeline: 4K Yakiniku, Churrascaria 808 Brazilian Steakhouse, Ikkyu Ramen, Icy Bubble, Selfie Café, and SIPS Café, Bar, Shop, along with a planned spa.

There's also a construction detail worth knowing if you've been wondering about the second building rising on the west end of the property. A 2024 trade report from Building Industry Hawaii projected the Waikoloa Plaza West expansion, anchored by HPM Building Supply, to open this August. An earlier Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce writeup had pointed to early 2026 for that same phase. If the Chamber's timeline held, the expansion may already be open by the time you read this. If the trade projection held instead, it's opening right now. Either way, if you need lumber or a saw blade, you may not need the drive to Kona much longer.

Two hotel brands are also planned to eventually flank that expansion. Pacific Business News reported that construction on the Holiday Inn Express was expected to begin sometime in 2025, with an opening targeted for 2027, while the Candlewood Suites follows on a slower clock: construction isn't expected to start until 2027, with an opening penciled in for 2028.

Down the hill, a few names worth knowing

A short drive toward the coast at Queens' Marketplace, two locally run spots have opened within the past year: Kona Biscuit Co., a scratch-made bakery and café built around biscuits and breakfast sandwiches, and Patina, an American gastropub serving craft cocktails and elevated comfort food. Snorkel Bob's is expected to join that stretch of the resort soon, filling what's been a longstanding gap for beach gear without a special trip further down the coast.

Two markets that are not the same market

This is the mix-up that trips up newer residents more than the shopping centers do. Waikoloa Village has its own monthly gathering, the Waikōloa Community Market, run by the nonprofit Waikōloa Grows since it launched in 2024. It's held at the Waikoloa Stables, at 68-1936 Waikoloa Road, and features farmers, food producers, and artisans alongside a rotating community tent with chef demonstrations and keiki activities. That's a different event entirely from the Kings' Shops Farmers Market down at Waikoloa Beach Resort, which runs on its own weekly schedule and leans more toward the resort's visitor traffic.

If you've shown up at the Stables looking for a weekday farmers market and left confused, or driven down to the resort on the wrong Saturday looking for the Village's market, you're not the first.

What actually changed this season

The honest version of "what's new in Waikoloa Village" isn't a single list. It's two lists, on two sides of the same street, moving at different speeds. The Highlands Center side is filling vacancies with names like Morningwood rather than growing its footprint. The Plaza side is still building out, with the HPM Building Supply-anchored expansion landing somewhere between already open and opening this month depending on which projection you trust, and Foodland, Starbucks, and a half-dozen restaurant names still sitting in the "expected" column rather than the "open" one.

None of this requires a special trip to track. Next time you're driving up Waikoloa Road, you'll know which side has the burger joint and which side has the biscuits, and which Saturday belongs to which market.

If you're weighing what any of this means for buying or selling a home in the Village, or you just want a local's read on how the area is holding up day to day, Denni Keyes grew up on this island and has spent more than a decade in Hawaii title and escrow work in addition to her real estate practice. Let's Connect whenever you're ready to talk through it.