‘It sucks’: Tenants describe disruptions as Topa Financial Center outage drags on
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) — Several businesses in a downtown Honolulu office complex say an ongoing power outage — now in its sixth day — is taking a serious toll.
The outage at Topa Financial Center began Thursday, July 23, when a chiller leak in the building’s basement damaged critical electrical equipment, knocking out power to nearly 100 tenants in two towers.
Owner Avalon Group said in a statement Tuesday that the Fort Street Tower is expected to reopen in about two weeks and the Bishop Street Tower would reopen in about a month.
In the meantime, tenants can park at the Topa garage and access their suites to remove items and retrieve mail.
CEO Christine Camp added the company is working on a temporary solutions to power elevators and lights. “We expect to be able to update our tenants on these efforts later this week,” she said.
Tenants describe impacts to business
Some tenants, like Scott Barley, president of Furniture Plus Design, purchased battery generators so they could continue to operate in the building.
Barley is on ground floor, and says the generators keep his server and computers running so most of his staff can work remotely.
“It sucks, but you gotta continue to operate best you can, so we’re trying to make do as best we can,” he said.
Other tenants, like attorney Tom Farell, have temporarily relocated to a co-working hub at nearby Davies Pacific Center, provided by Avalon Group.
Farell works on the 20th floor and moved to accommodate his clients. “One of them in particular is a little elderly and can’t get up 20 flights of stairs or down,” he said.
He added that the relocation has already impacted operations.
“Prospective clients have had trouble getting a hold of us,” he said. “We’re not able to get out our monthly billing statements, which enables us to transfer funds from our client trust account to our operating account and pay our bills. So we’re going to be a little late this month.”
Ortho Sport Hawaii relocated to Pickles at Forté on Fort Street Mall. Office manager Maile Turner said business has also been negatively impacted.
“Some of our concerns are being able to help the patients navigate their way to the new temporary location — how much walking is going to be involved for them if they’ve just come out of surgery,” Turner said.
“There’s lost revenue from patients not being able to come in, but more so, it impacts the patients not being able to get the care that they need and having delays in their care,” she said.