The Fate Of Lanai Hinges On A Los Angeles Real Estate Tycoon

Sophie Cocke/Civil Beat

Lanai residents’ anxiety is mounting and Maui County officials are scrambling for information after months of rumors and a recent announcement that Lanai’s billionaire owner, David Murdock, has put the island up for sale.

“The anxiety level is quite high because nobody can give any assurance that anything good is going to come out of this,” said Pat Reilly, a retired school counselor and longtime Lanai resident.

Murdock has propped up the island’s economy for more than two decades. But he may be pulling out in the face of bitter opposition over Big Wind – a project that could bring in millions of dollars for Murdock’s Castle & Cooke, the development company that manages the Lanai operation. Supporters of the project, particularly the unions, argue that Big Wind is critical to Lanai's economy because it would stop the company's financial hemhorraging and create jobs.

Last month, a Castle & Cooke official told lawmakers visiting Lanai that Murdock had put the island up for sale. But what a sale could mean has raised more questions than answers, leaving residents to fret over whether Lanai will be getting a new owner — or owners, if the island were to be broken up and sold off in parcels.

Not everyone is convinced that it’s sellable. And with Castle & Cooke losing $20 million to $40 million annually on its Lanai properties, some fear that the company might just shut down its operations.

“There seems to be this fantasy going on that someone like Murdock will come buy it,” Alberta de Jetley, the publisher of the island’s monthly newspaper, told Civil Beat last month. “There’s no one like Murdock. Why would anyone want to buy an island that takes $20 million to keep afloat?”

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