Tiny Island Revamped : Lanai: From Plantation to Playground

For the last 66 years, since James Dole bought Lanai and carved the tiny island into neat, golden rows of pineapple, little has changed.

A whistle still tells plantation workers when to get up, when to come to the fields, when to take their siestas, when to go home. People leave doors unlocked and keys in ignitions. The favorite beach is a paradise-perfect crescent of sand soft as talcum, fringed with coconut palms facing a translucent sea.

But now, bulldozers growl and saws whine over the slap of waves at Hulopoe Beach. Trees are coming down, a new recreation center has been built with Lanai’s first swimming pool. Before long hotels, parking lots, movie-star mansions, sculptured hedges, a refurbished marketplace and even a lawn bowling green will be sprouting.

Embrace Change

Many islanders publicly embrace the change that will nearly quintuple the 2,100 population over the next decade, saying Los Angeles developer David Murdock’s plans for his new island will invigorate Lanai, giving its young a reason to stay.

But others quietly resent the face-lift, arguing that a place so small cannot support a dream so big.

“The idea obviously is to look for the rich and famous,” said Bob Oda, Murdock’s vice-president in charge of Lanai development. He keeps a scale-model future Lanai under glass at his office, where he talks excitedly about the millions Murdock will spend turning a plantation into a playground.

Already the dusty old town with the grandiose name of Lanai City is being put to the white-glove test.

Murdock had junked cars and other unsightly rubbish removed from Lanai for free. And as Lanai emerged buffed and polished and painted and trimmed, many islanders took it as a sign that the future, too, would be bright. Others were not so sure.

‘Get Out Lawn Mowers’

“He came in and literally painted the flowers white,” scoffed one resident. “You always know when Mr. Murdock is coming to town because they get out the lawn mowers, paint the signs and put out potted plants.

“He trimmed the mesquite into bonsai and closed the beach for a private picnic with linens and china.”

Fumed another: “He’s cutting down all the cypress. He has a thing about cypress. I’m going to plant 20 in my front yard just to spite him.”

But Murdock also gave Lanai a $3-million recreation center with tennis courts, a pool, track, gymnasium, playground equipment and a football field, even though Lanai has no football team.

“Definitely there will be some adjustment, but I don’t think it’ll be as bad as some think,” said Goro Hokama, who has represented Lanai on the Maui County Council for 34 years. “A youngster coming up will have more choices, more exposure,” he said. “They won’t be as secluded as we were.”

Helen Pascua, a 30-year-old mother who emigrated from the Philippines four years ago and holds two part-time jobs, welcomes the changes.

“I like it. I know most people don’t,” she said, “but it’s about time. I’d like to work for the hotels.”

Oda insists the changes won’t be drastic.

Old Buildings Targeted

“We’re going to maintain the same plantation atmosphere,” he promised, outlining plans to “polish up downtown” by tearing down some old buildings and renovating the survivors.

“You won’t find strip malls in Lanai. It’s not going to be honky-tonky or anything,” he said. “We just want to create a little interest for visitors.”

With a view of booming Maui to the east, Lanai can see clearly what creating too much interest will bring--high-rise hotels, traffic jams and tourists splayed freckle-to-freckle on the beaches.

On the other side, literally, Lanai also can see the consequences of spurning development, a decision neighboring Molokai made only to suffer high unemployment when its pineapple industry collapsed.

But unlike their neighbors, Lanaians don’t really control their island’s destiny. They may belong to Lanai but Lanai does not belong to them. And if they don’t like it, as one resident noted, “it’s not as if we can pack up the station wagon and just move 100 miles up a freeway to another town.”

Belongs to Dole Firm

Lanai, at least 98% of it, belongs to Castle & Cooke, parent company of Dole, which turned the 141-square-mile speck of ranchland into--as the sign at the airstrip breathlessly proclaims--”Lanai, The Pineapple Island, The World’s Premier Pineapple Plantation, Grower of Famous Dole Products.”

But recent times have not been as expansive as the sign suggests, leaving Castle & Cooke deeply in debt. In July, 1985, Murdock’s New York-based Flexi-Van Corp. paid $337 million to merge with Castle & Cooke, making Murdock chairman of the board and chief executive officer. He also owns 25% of the new company. With that comes the power to redesign both the life style and landscape of Lanai.

Criticism of Murdock and his make-over is muted even from the angriest handful of Lanaians. Jobs, businesses and homes could be at stake. Commercial leases on the island are up for renewal this year, and even those islanders who don’t work directly for Castle & Cooke often owe the company something.

A grass-roots group organized to discuss community concerns debated for hours over the least offensive name, settling on Lanaians for Sensible Growth and vowing to keep the 180-name membership list secret.

Public Access to Beach

The cautious group’s major battle was winning guaranteed public access to Hulopoe, the island’s nicest beach and the only one considered safe and accessible. But with a 250-room luxury hotel under construction on a ridge overlooking Hulopoe, islanders still fear that rich tourists eventually will take over the small cove.

“We’re called rebels. We’re called troublemakers,” said Ron McOmber, who settled in Lanai more than 16 years ago and spent the last five building his own dream house, nail by nail, on a slope that now overlooks construction sites.

“We’re very protective of a very special place,” he said. “They can build the Taj Mahal there. We just want to know what is going on with our island and we want to participate in it.”

What’s going on, according to Oda, is something of a weaning process.

“They’re used to the company taking care of them,” he said. “We’d like people to be a little more independent and less dependent on the plantation . . . to do everything for them.”

Paternalistic Rule

Since 1922, Lanai has been a company town under a paternalistic, plantation rule. Even residents who quarrel with Castle & Cooke’s new plans readily admit that Dole has been a benevolent overseer.

Because agriculture has been unionized in Hawaii since the 1940s, the hours Lanaians spend stooped over the prickly pineapple plants bring a decent paycheck, and Dole has provided such perks as subsidized housing, a dispensary, a free golf course and space on its barges for furniture or goods the Lanaians buy off the island.

“We don’t want the island solely dependent on pineapple,” Oda said. “This obviously will provide residents here with an alternative source to earn income as opposed to the plantation. It will give the economy stability.”

Oda has promised Lanaians first crack at the hundreds of new jobs, and training programs will be offered.

“Instead of working in the hot sun, they can work in air-conditioned hotels,” he said. “Nothing is harder than plantation work.”

Language Skills a Factor

But Filipino immigrants with little or no English make up most of the island’s population, and Oda conceded that language skills will be a major consideration in hiring.

Murdock, during his periodic visits to Lanai, already has run afoul of local etiquette. Local police have had complaints about Murdock and his sons running frightened drivers off the rugged roads, and the industrialist also intentionally rammed his Jeep Cherokee into a coco palm.

“Since then, he realized you don’t use a car to get a coconut,” Oda said.

Murdock did not return telephone calls from The Times.

Between two luxury hotels and more than 550 lots for housing, Oda said, the company plans to pump approximately $200 million into Lanai over the next three to four years. The Hulopoe hotel will fetch $350 for a night’s lodging, and rumors abound that entertainers Kenny Rogers and Tina Turner will build mansions on some of the custom lots.

Formal Gardens Planted

Already, wild tropical plants are being uprooted to make way for formal gardens around the hotel sites, and the imported Japanese shrubbery waiting to be planted at Hulopoe is kept behind new electric fences.

“There will be well-manicured flowering areas,” Oda said. “Mr. Murdock is very fond of flowers. There will be sculptured hedges and well-disciplined flower beds.

“We’ll also have croquet and a bowling green.”

Pheasant, partridge and quail will be raised for vacationing hunters and shuttle buses will offer tours of Lanai City for those wanting a taste of local color. The airport terminal, now the size of a large walk-in closet with fruit flies, will eventually be replaced and the airport itself expanded.

While fresh opportunities and a sturdier economic foundation are the pluses of redesigning Lanai, Oda said, “if there is a negative thing, it’s the fact that it’s going to change their life style, and the face of the island.”

A few young Lanaians already have been lured home with new jobs, and the prospect of new opportunities for their children has many islanders firmly on the side of development.

Most Graduates Leave

“A minimum of 90% of our high school graduates leave the island and don’t come back,” Hokama said.

“Basically, the majority is for the changes. A lot of people would like to see their kids come home or stay here. There’s a lot of concern that we don’t become like Molokai if pineapple gives up,” he said.

From the deck of his new dream house, McOmber can see pineapple fields rolling out in a green-and-gold carpet that is no longer endless. He can also see the skeletons of a new housing tract.

“It’s not going to be the same Lanai,” he lamented. “It’ll never be Lanai again.”

Oda agrees, but he chooses to look at it another way.

“We won’t be isolated from the world,” he said. “It’s no longer the club of 2,100.”