Larry Ellison won an America's Cup sailing in 2010, and then wrestled with San Francisco city leaders over his big plans for two waterfront piers. He owns a mansion atop a San Francisco hill with a sweeping view of the Golden Gate Bridge to the left and Alcatraz to the right. He has spent a fortune snapping up some of Southern California's most prized beachfront property in Malibu.
For Oracle CEO Ellison an island in the middle of the Pacific is right up his alley.
He built Oracle Corp. with $1,200 in 1977 and is the world's sixth richest billionaire. He inked a deal announced this week by the governor to buy 98 percent of the island's 141 square miles.
While detailed plans for the island have yet to be revealed, he's likely to do something "epic and grand," said Mike Wilson, who wrote the first biography of Ellison, "The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison."
"He could build the world's largest rare butterfly sanctuary, a medical research facility to help him live forever or a really cool go-cart track," Wilson said Thursday – but only half-jokingly, because those are the kinds of outlandish interests Ellison has.
As a man who feels cheated by a limited life-span, he's like a kid who never grew up but yet is a great visionary, Wilson said.
Wilson said the high-tech maverick won't be concerned with how his lifestyle will jibe with a laid-back island where longtime residents are grappling with the loss of their pineapple fields to make way for luxury development: "I don't think his primary concern is fitting in with what Hawaiians want." (...)
While Lanaians are eager for someone who might restore agriculture to the island's economy or someone who appreciates the unique culture of Hawaii, residents also are familiar with living on what Castle & Cooke calls the largest privately held island in the United States.
"Lanai folks have always been sort of under this benevolent ownership, which goes back to the Dole days," University of Hawaii historian Warren Nishimoto said of Lanai's ownership in the 1920s by the founder of Dole Foods Co. "They never felt comfortable about what the future is for the island. It's at the whims of an owner."
by Jennifer Sinco Kelleher, Huffington Post | Read more:
Photo: Robin Kaye via Bloomberg News
