The pending sale of Lanai to billionaire Larry Ellison is more than just big news; it is a mirror for the state.
Look at the sale and you see a 141-square-mile island with good water, great people and mostly potential. Look at Lanai and you also see the tiny state of Hawaii buffeted and pulled by powerful outside forces it cannot control.
Lanai is the little island that could but didn’t.
First it was sugar and a plantation that didn’t work, and then there was ranching, sheep and goat and also cattle, which also didn’t work. Finally, in 1922, James Dole bought Lanai with the idea of growing pineapple.
The pineapple plantation caught on. Lanai was the summer destination for high school athletes and local kids strong enough for the tough work of picking pineapple. The population grew from the 120 in the ranching days to about 3,000.
Folks on Lanai looked like Hawaii: Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Caucasian and Hawaiian.
After a nearly 70-year run, the sweet fruit was being grown cheaper everywhere else in the world except Hawaii. While putting pineapple on anything from pizza to ham prompted chefs to call it "Hawaiian," pine was leaving the islands.
"We all knew Dole was done; we didn’t know what would happen, and then Mr. Murdock came," said one Lanai resident who talked to me about the sale.
The hard-working folk who literally awoke each morning to the Dole plantation whistle were learning a new lifestyle: the hospitality industry.
After James Dole, the second really rich guy to buy Lanai was David Murdock, corporate raider and investor who eventually took the corporation Castle & Cooke Inc. private and moved the island into the jet age.
The tiny Lanai City airport was beefed up. Locals would joke that when the big corporate jet taxied up to the two-room facility, the airport fire truck was parked in front of the big picture window to protect it from the jet blasts.
Murdock built two beautiful hotels, golf courses, archery ranges, shooting ranges, horse stables and riding trails.
Plantation workers learned the hotel business.
"You should have seen it. Everybody on the island was retrained; all my aunties and uncles were so neat to work with. They treated everybody just like you were coming over to their house," said the woman, now a counselor on Lanai, who asked that her name not be used.
News of the sale was Topics One, Two and Three all across the shops and gathering places bordering Dole Park. Copies of the Star-Advertiser proclaiming Ellison "Mr. Lanai" were snatched up and handed from resident to resident.
The new owner has reportedly promised to support the island. The Associated Press reports that the company delivered letters to Lanai employees informing them of the sale and that they’ll all be retained by Ellison, with all contracts being transferred.
Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who had an early heads up on the sale, noted that Ellison is "a businessman whose record of community involvement in medical research and education causes is equally notable."
Sen. J. Kalani English, who represents the island, said, "To the people of Lanai, this transfer of ownership is much more than a business transaction.
"It is the livelihood of a community and of an island. As such, it remains imperative that cultural and conservational values be main- tained."
Just as it is likely that Ellison’s former yacht "Rising Sun" — at a length of 254 feet — would have been too big to fit into Lanai’s Kaumalapau Harbor, moving Ellison’s unspecified plans for his new possession into the local community may not be an easy fit.
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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
