Moloka'i - Hawaii - page 822

In the 1990s the ranch operated a small wildlife-safari park, where tourists
snapped pictures of exotic animals, and trophy hunters paid $1500 a head to shoot
African eland and blackbuck antelope. Rumors abound of how local activists, long
resistant to the type of tourist-oriented development that has all but consumed
neighboring Maui, made life so difficult for the ranch that the safari park was shut
down.
Beginning in 2001, the current owners of Molokaʻi Ranch, the Singapore-based
Molokaʻi Properties, began a campaign to revitalize the holdings. They developed
plans to reopen the Kaluakoi Hotel (and did reopen the golf course) and transfer
the title to cultural sites and recreational areas amounting to 26,000 acres to a
newly created Molokaʻi Land Trust, essentially turning it into public land. They
would also have given up the right to develop another 24,000 acres of their own
lands.
But there was one small detail…what Molokaʻi Properties wanted in return: the
right to develop 200 one-acre lots on pristine Laʻau Point into a luxury subdivision
marketed to multimillionaires. Most locals had an immediate and negative reaction
to this. It was the '70s all over again. Signs saying 'Save Laʻau Point' sprouted
island-wide (and can still be seen).
Despite numerous community meetings and plans, Molokaʻi Properties got
nowhere, as the residents of the Hawaii island with the highest unemployment
thumbed their noses at the promise of hundreds of resort and service jobs.
In 2008 Molokaʻi Properties essentially took its toys and went home. It pulled the
plug on all its operations, laid off dozens, closed its hotel and golf course and
furthered the ghost-town feel of Maunaloa and the Kaluakoi resort area. Only a
last-minute intervention by Maui County kept the water running.
With the global economy in the dumps, it's unlikely that Molokaʻi Properties will
be back anytime soon with new development schemes. Meanwhile, schemes to
erect 91 enormous power-generating windmills west of Maunaloa have run afoul of
Molokaʻi's fractious politics and strong preservation beliefs.
A further example of the local political scene occurred in 2012 when word spread
around the island that cruise ships planned to visit Molokaʻi. Soon anti-cruise-ship
signs sprouted in yards and meetings were held. Eventually it became clear that
'cruise ships' were really a yacht that carried not 3600 passengers, nor 360 pas-
sengers but rather 36 passengers. Eventually American Safari Cruises ( www.un-
cruise.com ) defused the protests by promising to only visit the island once a week
and to hire lots of local people for its operations.