WorkPlay

01 · Context

Where this came from.

My firm, The Redmont Group, owned a building in Kakaʻako with a coworking concept that wasn't working. Instead of finding a tenant, I redeveloped it and ran it myself: WorkPlay, a dual-concept venue — designed and built in-house by my own firm, credited as entrant, lead design firm, and general contractor on the 2019 NAIOP Kukulu Hale Award record.

02 · What I owned

Mine, personally.

• The full P&L — revenue, cost, and payroll landing every Friday
• Hiring, training, and leading 150+ staff across front-of-house, back-of-house, and events, at hospitality-industry turnover
• Nightly live-music programming and the artist relationships behind it
• Vendors, suppliers, compliance, and inspections
• The weekly operating cadence that kept a seven-day operation coherent

03 · What happened (dated)

What a skeptic should know.

Open and press-covered by March 2019; NAIOP Hawaii Kukulu Hale Award the same year. Operated through the pandemic years and closed in September 2023. The venue chapter ended; what it taught me about live-music economics became PaperPlay.

05 · What it proves

Why it matters.

• Leading big hourly teams — hiring, firing, and holding standards at real turnover
• P&L instincts formed where the margin is thin and the payroll is personal
• Calm under operational fire: a seven-day venue does not care about your plan
• Deep, first-hand knowledge of the market PaperPlay now serves — from the owner's side of the bar