Yet for all its seeming serenity, Lanai — a privately owned island in easy sight of Maui’s western shore — is torn these days by economic and cultural conflict, struggling with its identity and an uncertain future after its reclusive residents learned that their island had been sold to the reclusive billionaire owner of a software company.
Since James Drummond Dole bought Lanai from a rancher 90 years ago, the island has undergone a series of wrenching economic transformations. Under Dole, it became the world’s largest pineapple plantation, known as Pineapple Island, with bristling fields and a colony of workers. When Dole moved its operations overseas in the late 1980s, Lanai turned to tourism, opening two high-end resorts where rooms go for as much as $1,100 a night, providing a new source of employment for this community.
But when those resorts struggled with the recent economic downturn and the challenge of bringing tourists to a remote island with single-propeller air service, the island’s owner proposed building a field of 45-story turbine windmills, across bluffs and beaches covering over a quarter of the island, to produce energy to sell to Oahu. The plan polarized residents, dividing those who saw the turbines as the economic salvation of their struggling island from those who treasured its wild and undeveloped isolation.
“It’s awful, just awful,” said Robin Kaye, one of the opponents, sweeping his arm across the land where the windmills would rise, a tumble of otherworldly rock formations framed by views across the Pacific to Maui and Molokai. “There are families who won’t talk to each other anymore. It has really ripped us up.”
Lanai’s new owner is Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle. He bought 98 percent of the island — the remainder is government property and privately owned homes — six weeks ago from David H. Murdock, another billionaire, whose holdings include Dole and who was the force behind the windmill proposal. The price was not disclosed.
Mr. Ellison now owns the gas station, the car rental agency and the supermarket. He owns the Lanai City Grille, the Hotel Lanai, the two Four Seasons resorts, two championship golf courses, about 500 cottages and luxury homes, a solar farm, and nearly every single one of the small shops and cafes that line Lanai City. He owns 88,000 acres of overgrown pineapple fields and arid, boulder-strewn hills, thick with red dust, as well as 50 miles of beaches.
But Mr. Murdock is not quite gone. As part of his deal, he retained the option to build the windmills should he win the requisite approvals. That was viewed here as one final anxiety-causing shot at his Lanai neighbors.
For all the speculation about Mr. Ellison’s intentions — the most prevalent being that the new owner, whose team of yachts won the America’s Cup in 2010, would turn Lanai into a hub for sailing — he has yet to appear in public, speak with elected officials or tell anyone what he might have in mind. He did not respond to a request for comment.
“Everybody is basically in the dark,” said Mary Charles, who runs the Hotel Lanai. “It’s been a very tough struggle for Lanai for the past five years.”
by Adam Nagourney, NT Times | Read more:
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
