Larry’s party
Billionaire Ellison purchased 98 per cent of Lanai four years ago, now he can show off the Hawaiian island’s fancy new digs
Apostrophe-shaped Lanai is the perfect size to do just one thing really well. It’s been a Mormon colony, a massive ranch and the world’s largest pineapple plantation. Now the smallest of the Aloha State’s public islands and its 3,000 residents are testing the waters as a sustainable society-building experiment steered by luxury tourism. The driver: tech billionaire Larry Ellison.
When the entire 88,000acre, 140-square-mile island (or 98 per cent of it, anyway) just west of Maui came up for sale in 2012, Oracle’s Ellison snapped it all up, landing two coveted Four Seasons resorts in the deal. And as of this February, after years of small improvements and a seven- month complete shut down, Four Seasons Resort Lanai on Manele Bay is reopen for business.
“As far as we’re concerned, it’s a completely new resort,” said GM Tom Reolens, a 10- year veteran of the property who managed Ellison’s total overhaul, from new rooms to new pools. “We opened up all the views, changed all the landscaping, all new restaurants and have altered the look to be much more Hawaiian.”
Visiting a month into the beachside resort’s Billionaire Upgrade, those words ring true. If it was spoken of at all before, travellers knew Manele Bay as an underwhelming, “aff ordable” Four Seasons with a dated Asian look. Its commendable qualities were a location on a quiet, private beach, and the arresting cliff- side golf course where Ellison’s sometime rival billionaire Bill Gates married his wife Melinda on the 12th tee.
T hat Ja c k Nickl a us - designed course is still there — though now only open to guests — and drawing celebs since re- opening like Cindy Crawford, Will Smith, and Derek Jeter, but the rest of Manele is unrecognizable. By all accounts Ellison was personally involved in every element of the construction as well, making the designer Todd Avery Lenahan and hundreds of workers redo the lobby from scratch four different times, until the ocean views upon entering were framed just right. Designs now mix a few midcentury modern pieces, traditional Hawaiian materials and Polynesian artwork, like a 19th century Koa Hawaiian outrigger canoe.
The result is arguably the best Four Seasons resort in the world — a sentiment the head of Four Seasons hotels, Isadore Sharp, shared with Roelens at the resort’s reopening in February. “He told us that this is the best room product we have in our company today.”
What do the 3,000 plus locals who live in Lanai think about their “Uncle Larry,” as he’s been nicknamed?
Everyone willing to go on the record was either sanguine or flat- out enthusiastic about what he’s done to the resort and for the island — new investments in infrastructure range from the small ( like trimming problematic trees) to the necessary ( a new water filtration system) to the marquee (a resortquality, Olympic-sized public pool). There’s even a new state-of-the-art movie theatre which all the islanders claim is the best in Hawaii.
The few potential dissenting voices — including a woman at the tiny airport who ominously said “do your research” when it became clear she was talking to a reporter — wouldn’t allow themselves to be interviewed.
The island’s been in private hands since the 1870s, first Mormon missionaries, then ranchers, and finally Dole to grow pineapples. Industrialist David Murdock bought Castle & Cooke ( Dole’s holding company that owned the island), and decided to create the two resorts in the 1990s which still stand. As Carroll pointed out, “had the resorts not been built we would be in real economic trouble,” but it took Ellison to rescue them.
Jenna Majkus, owner of a clothing and gift boutique down the square called The Local Gentry, agrees, “Immediately from Ellison buying the resort and island, our infrastructure was getting much needed investment”
These “city” residents — there are no stoplights in town or anywhere on the island — eagerly await the reopening of the 101- room Lodge at Keole. Nowhere near the beach, the second of Ellison’s Four Seasons resorts is nestled in the heart of the island’s former ranching operations just to the east of town.
Its very un-Hawaiian dormered plantation-style house resembles more a woodsy National Park lodge than tropical paradise and draws guests accordingly. Indeed, a wood burning fireplace in the main building is the state’s largest (and one of 10 fireplaces at the lodge). The plan is to reopen The Lodge at Keole at the end of 2016, in time for Christmas.
It ’s undoubtedly t rue that Ellison will never make back the money he’s poured into his Hawaii project, but gauging from how involved he is in not only in the resort but also the island, this asset’s profitability is clearly not the point. Nor is promoting it as a feather in his cap (he declined to speak on the record). The point lies more in what he’s said previously: “It feels like this really cool 21st-century engineering project where I get to work with the people of Lanai to create a prosperous and sustainable Eden in the Pacific.” Watching the last sunset go down on my own too-short time in this Eden, that dedication indeed shines through.