Development brings island ‘something besides pineapple.’

For Elaine Kaopuiki, the luxury hotel that opened Sunday on her beloved island of Lanai goes a step too far.

“I have to buy hosieries to go up there!” she says indignantly. “And our men have to wear coats! Who owns coats on this island?” Pink hibiscus blossoms in her hair shimmer as she shakes her head.

To this staunchly rural Hawaiian island, long a holdout from tourism, the opening of the 103-room Lodge at Koele is the first step in a transformation.

Since the 1920s, pineapple cultivation has defined Lanai. Neat, green plantation tracts cover the island’s central plateau like a quilt. Life here has been a simple one of hard work in the fields, evenings at home and weekends of camping and fishing by moonlight. Virtually every face encountered was a familiar one.

No longer. The Lodge represents the beginning of the development of Lanai by Los Angeles-based Castle & Cooke Inc. (which owns 98% of the island) to accommodate well-heeled world travelers. A second, 250-room hotel overlooking Lanai’s boat beach is under construction. Also in the works are two golf courses and hundreds of luxury estates.

With them comes change to this wind-swept isle and its 3,300 inhabitants. The two resorts will bring 750 jobs and uncounted spinoff employment to an island with a work force of about 1,000 today. A flood of new people, both to staff the hotels and to stay in them, is already coming.

Until now, one restaurant was enough for the entire island. People seldom ate out at night. And when they did, they knew they would be welcome in T-shirts and jeans stained with Lanai’s red dirt.

The new Lodge, on the outskirts of town, is a world apart, built in a style reminiscent of an English manor with croquet, antique furnishings and formally clad butlers. Room rates go from $275 to $900 a night. The bathroom tiles were hand-painted in France. The briarwood walking sticks in the closets are imported from Britain. The chefs serve up delicacies such as seared Lanai venison and sweet rice waffles with passion fruit chutney.

The hand-picked visitors who have come for sneak previews have raved about the elegance. But to Kaopuiki, a matronly grandmother who will sing for guests there once a week, the ambience feels alien. “Lanai has never been a fancy place,” she said. “Don’t make her into something she’s not.”

Nevertheless, the pace is quickening here. Almost everyone is working and some people have two jobs. At Lanai High School, only four seniors turned out to build floats for Homecoming Day this year, instead of the usual two dozen.

“The others were all working at the hotel,” said Roger Alconcel, the student council president.

Lanai also is losing some of its innocence. In November, police there made their first big-time drug arrest when they busted a purported distributor of crystal methamphetamine. Major thefts and burglaries have more than tripled in the last three years, and incidents of domestic violence have doubled.

Still, most residents welcome development as a way of breathing new life into Lanai’s economy and reducing its dependence on the pineapple crop.

“Before, it was pineapple every day--rain or shine, pineapple, pineapple, pineapple!” said Felipa Cabato, as she turned down the sheets on one of the four-poster beds at the Lodge. “We are fortunate to have something besides pineapple. We never dreamed of hotel work!”

Jennifer Tamashiro credits the tourism with 40% of her sales at Akamai Trading this year. “That’s a market I never had before,” she said. “I can’t even keep up with the T-shirts!

“The resort development has taken away some things from us, yes,” she added. “It’s taken away sluggish business and unemployment. It’s taken away a lack of opportunity for us and our children.”

Still, some residents say the down side of development outweighs any such benefits. Members of Lanaians for Sensible Growth, a citizens’ group, worry about its effects on the island’s water supply, housing costs and archeological sites.

“Mr. (Castle & Cooke chairman David) Murdoch says he’s going to bring quality to our lifestyle,” said Martha Evans, a teacher and spokeswoman for the group. “He just doesn’t understand what quality of life is.”

Tom Leppert, who heads Castle & Cooke’s development arm, says that the company will maintain the integrity of the island because it is good business to do so.

“Nobody is building 2,000-room, 20-story hotels,” he said. “These are very modest. And there’s been an incredible commitment on the part of the company to the community.”

Murdoch, a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur, has taken personal interest in every detail of the development. He said the island is “much more to me than just somewhere to make money.”

In all, the company is pouring $370 million into Lanai, not only for hotels and related amenities, but also for subsidized employee housing and a swimming pool it donated to residents.

Such efforts have helped win over even some of the company’s detractors. Sol Kahoohalahala, who fought resort development for 10 years, now is director of cultural resources for the hotels.

“Since the plan for development is already set, what we should be doing is looking at how we can create the kind of place we want,” he said. “People say that our community is going to become one of haves and have-nots, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Others are less hopeful. At a hearing last month on the golf course proposed for the arid shoreline near Manele Bay Hotel, Elaine Kaopuiki pleaded to have the area left in its natural state.

“You own this land on paper,” she told company executives, her eyes brimming with tears, “but you don’t own it in your heart. I do.

“You mess up my island, you can go home to California or whatever. I can’t.”