{"id":8709872,"date":"2023-01-09T08:55:38","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T16:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eastbaytimes.com\/?p=8709872&preview=true&preview_id=8709872"},"modified":"2023-01-10T09:25:58","modified_gmt":"2023-01-10T17:25:58","slug":"from-pineapples-to-billionaires-discovering-modern-day-lanai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eastbaytimes.com\/2023\/01\/09\/from-pineapples-to-billionaires-discovering-modern-day-lanai\/","title":{"rendered":"From pineapples to billionaires: Discovering modern-day Lanai"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWow, I\u2019m jealous,\u201d says my buddy, Justin. \u201cI\u2019ve never met anyone who\u2019s been to Lanai.\u201d<\/p>\n

Considering he\u2019s about to spend three weeks in Antarctica, I\u2019m not sure who has more traveler\u2019s envy. But my sojourn to Hawaii\u2019s so-called \u201cPineapple Island\u201d is undeniably a punch off my bucket list.<\/p>\n

My wife and I have made dozens of trips to the state\u2019s Big Four — Oahu, Hawaii, Maui and Kauai — plus a foray to oft-overlooked Molokai that failed spectacularly thanks to a mouse invasion. Lanai\u2019s the last in my collect-\u2018em-all catalog \u2013 the smallest and least-populous of the islands folks can visit, since Kahoolawe\u2019s an uninhabited former bombing range and tiny Niihau\u2019s off-limits beyond the family that owns it.<\/p>\n

Oh yes, Lanai\u2019s in private hands, too. A decade ago, Oracle founder and chairman Larry Ellison \u2013 the planet\u2019s seventh-richest human<\/a> \u2013 bought 98 percent of it from a corporate offshoot of pineapple giant Dole.<\/p>\n

Ellison paid 300 times the cool $1 million fruit tycoon James Dole dropped in the Roaring ’20s for the 140-square-mile rock. Dole created an enormous plantation complete with quaint company town. But by the early 1990s, production had shut down in favor of luxury golf resorts.<\/p>\n

Three years before Ellison bought the island, the National Trust for Historic Preservation called tiny Lanai City one of America\u2019s \u201cmost endangered historic places.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellison has long been one of Silicon Valley\u2019s most colorful, combative and controversial CEOs; one has to think he got a kick from buying the island his longtime nemesis, Bill Gates, once rented out to get married.<\/p>\n

\"Lanai's
Lanai’s Shipwreck Beach offers stunning views toward neighboring Molokai, left, and Maui, right. (Courtesy\u00a0Peter Delevett) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But locals we meet have nothing but praise.<\/p>\n

When COVID shuttered the tourist trade that\u2019s the island\u2019s life blood, Ellison stopped charging merchants rent for nine months, says Kathy Carroll, whose family art gallery fronts downtown\u2019s Dole Park. \u201cPeople wouldn\u2019t have made it otherwise,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Now Ellison, who grew up poor on Chicago\u2019s South Side, is building badly needed affordable housing. \u201cWell, it\u2019s Larry\u2019s take on affordable housing,\u201d laughs Carroll. \u201cEvery unit has flat-screen TVs and a solar roof from Tesla.\u201d (Ellison sits on the board of that company, which is run by fellow centibillionaire Elon Musk.)<\/p>\n

Ellison also won plaudits for resurrecting his new hometown\u2019s movie house. Dole commissioned the Lanai Theater in 1926, but like the pineapple industry, it went bust in the 1990s. Two years \u2013 and a $4 million renovation \u2013 after Ellison\u2019s arrival, the bijou was reborn as the Hale Keaka (\u201cpicture house\u201d). Offerings while we were in town included \u201cBlack Adam\u201d (starring Polynesian superstar Dwayne Johnson) and a George Clooney-Julia Roberts romcom called, aptly enough, \u201cTicket to Paradise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though a framed black-and-white in the lobby reveals a grubby marquee where tickets cost a buck (50 cents for kids), the cinema now resembles a Zen retreat center with smooth-planed cypress ceilings. That\u2019s in keeping with Ellison\u2019s well-known penchant for Japanese art and architecture.<\/p>\n

So is his retconning of the venerable Lodge at Koele, which thanks to Ellison is now the Four Seasons Sensei. Carroll says Ellison kept paying the entire staff throughout the pandemic \u2013 enlightened self-interest, perhaps, but still far from Ellison\u2019s less-than-charitable reputation.<\/p>\n

\"Larry
Larry Ellison’s Four Seasons Sensei evokes a tropical Thurston Howell estate.\u00a0 \u00a0(Courtesy Peter Delevett) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ellison owns all three hotels on the island \u2013 the Sensei, another Four Seasons overlooking the ocean 20 minutes away, and the boutique Hotel Lanai, which began life as a plantation overseer\u2019s spread.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Airbnb, we find a much more affordable but delightfully appointed bungalow owned by a Maui-based artist. To paraphrase Spinal Tap\u2019s Nigel Tufnel, \u201cWe\u2019re not Four Seasons material.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Black
Black cod with miso and hajikami (picked ginger) is just one of the dinner delights at Sensei by Nobu. Celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa co-owns restaurants at Larry Ellison’s hotels in more than a dozen locales, including Lanai City and Palo Alto. (Courtesy Peter Delevett) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Still, since we\u2019ve come to the island for our 25th wedding anniversary, I try to make dinner reservations at the ultra-swanky Sensei by Nobu \u2013 only to learn it\u2019s exclusively for hotel guests. Thankfully, a friend who once worked closely with Ellison pulls some strings to get us in for the big night. Call it Silicon Valley networking, island-style.<\/p>\n

Not everything Ellison has touched on Lanai has turned to gold. In 2013, the mogul bought commuter carrier Island Air to shuttle guests to his island; three years later, he sold it amid a flood of red ink, and the buyer subsequently folded. (We flew in and out on the same tiny Mokulele Airlines prop planes we took to Molokai 10 years back. They evoke Volkswagen microbuses with ironing boards welded to the roof. Visitors also have a ferry option.)<\/p>\n

Now Ellison is paying $5 million to lengthen the runway at minuscule Lanai Airport to accommodate more private jets. Some elected leaders grumble about widening the gap between the haves, the have-nots and the have-everythings.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the state of Hawaii \u2013 which owns the 2 percent of Lanai that Ellison doesn\u2019t \u2013 is proposing to develop an agricultural park for small farmers. One county councilman calls it \u201ca chunk of land of our own that Larry Ellison won\u2019t have a say in.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while development tussles have riven Molokai over the years, Lanai City seems to breathe the Hawaiian value of ohana (family). The rows of tin-roofed plantation cottages \u2013 some charmingly restored, others scruffily casual \u2013 evoke the architectural quaintness of Lahaina, Maui\u2019s old whaling town, without the touristy.