Residential building that survived Lahaina fire on Front Street set to reopen later this month

Just two months before the Aug. 8, 2023 wildfire, Martin Cherry was hired as the property manager of the Lahaina Roads apartment complex on Front Street.

He signed up to be the go-to guy for maintenance issues and residents’ complaints. He didn’t expect to spend nearly two years overseeing extensive repairs of damaged concrete and burned utilities, a task he took on while juggling his own losses that included damage to the interior of his home in the building, and fending off looters. 

But now, the extensive overhaul is nearly complete. On June 16, Cherry’s neighbors will be able to return to one of the few residential buildings on Front Street that did not burn to the ground. 

“One of the hardest things, too, is that (my wife) and I have been unsettled for almost two years,” Cherry told the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative. “Our apartment still hasn’t been finished. … It’s been a stressful time. But at the same token, I’ve met a lot of great people, and what I’ve accomplished here is what I’ve been wanting to do.” 

The 42-unit building opens at a pivotal time, as the Maui County Council prepares to decide on Mayor Richard Bissen’s proposal to ban more than 7,000 short-term rentals for certain condominiums in apartment districts, including Lahaina Roads. Only seven of the units are owned by permanent residents. The rest are part-time residents or owners who operate their units as vacation rentals. 

“Whether or not that’s going to happen or not, that’s still down the road,” Cherry said. “But the main thing is … they just want the people to be able to have access to their homes again.”

Lahaina Roads was built in 1969, according to property tax records, and is located at the Wahikuli end of Front Street near the old Chart House restaurant. It includes 33 one-bedroom units, six two-bedroom units and three two-bedroom penthouses, Cherry said. 

The August 2023 wildfire that destroyed more than 2,200 Lahaina homes and businesses left only a few remaining along Front Street, including a handful of restaurants behind the Lahaina Cannery Mall, some homes near Mala Wharf, and a couple of business and apartment buildings near Lahaina Harbor.

Lahaina Roads is one of the only surviving residential buildings makai of Honoapi‘ilani Highway in addition to Lahaina Crossroads on Luakini Street and the partially damaged Lahaina Surf along Waine‘e Street. Every other house around Lahaina Roads burned down. Recently, state lawmakers passed a bill to help expedite the rebuilding of Lahaina Surf and other affordable rentals that burned in the fire.

Cherry, the former resident manager at the 115-unit Napili Point Resort, said when the opportunity came up to live and work at the oceanfront Lahaina Roads, a place he and his wife couldn’t afford to own, they couldn’t pass up the chance. He took his new job on June 1, 2023.

Two months later, as wind whipped debris across the property and the fire drew closer, Cherry was rushing through the apartment building knocking on doors and begging people to evacuate. Nearly everyone fled to safety, with the exception of two elderly couples who refused to leave. 

“It’s already black, dark, I’m talking to him through smoke and embers and I’m telling him, ‘you got to go. We got to go,’” Cherry recalled.

Unable to convince the couples to get out of the building, Cherry and his wife evacuated just as the fire reached one of the houses separating them from the highway.

Cherry and his wife returned the next morning to find the building still standing and the two couples miraculously still alive. The fire had rushed right through the open living room windows of Cherry and his wife’s apartment, and while it didn’t burn anything, it left the entire unit covered in blackened soot.

“Basically, we lost everything inside,” he said. 

For nearly three weeks, they looked after the two other couples and monitored the property. They used pool water to flush the toilets, solar panels to charge their phones, and removed parts from the barbecue grills so they could cook. One couple finally left on day 12, and the other on day 16. During their stay, Cherry said he chased looters away four times. 

After the other couples agreed to leave the burn zone, Cherry and his wife moved to a nearby hotel room. They checked on their apartment when they could. On Thanksgiving morning, they returned to find the door wide open and some of their belongings looted — “anything and everything they can carry.” They spent the holiday eating Ritz crackers and peanut butter, staying there for the next eight or nine days out of fear the looters would return. 

Eventually the building’s insurance company arranged for the stairwells to be boarded up and locked and a fence was placed around the entire complex. 

Repairing the building was the next biggest challenge. Rebar expanding from the heat had split the concrete in places. A rental car that caught fire in the garage damaged the electrical and plumbing systems. Loads of debris had blown onto the property. 

Cherry said his relationships with contractors that went back to his time at Napili Point came in handy. They fixed the concrete, which constituted the majority of the work, repainted the once-pink building in white, and repaired the damaged electrical system. County officials helped restore water to the building in the months after the fire, but the pressure varied depending on work taking place in the area.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how thankful I am for each and every contractor that came on-site because they worked their butts off for us,” Cherry said. “They just nonstop, every day, kept after it.” 

He and his wife moved back to their unit in June 2024, a month before electricity was restored. Their apartment still isn’t fully finished, and they still need a bathroom floor, but they’re eager to have some stability after the trauma of the fire and the months of repairs that followed.

To Cherry’s knowledge, no one has sold their unit since the fire. He said he thinks the county’s decision on the short-term rental bill will likely determine for some owners whether they keep or sell their units.

Cherry pointed out that he doesn’t own a unit and thus doesn’t have an investment at stake, but when it comes to the county bill, he said, “I personally think that it would be a good thing for the people of Lahaina, because people do need homes. A lot of them were only renting the buildings they were in, and we don’t know what’s going to happen with a lot of those people once they rebuild.”

Sne Patel, president of the LahainaTown Action Committee, used to live across from Lahaina Roads and sees the soon reopening of the complex as a good sign.

“I think we need to start getting people back into their homes and getting people back into living in spaces that haven’t been habitable for awhile,” Patel said. “I just think that that’s forward progress in this overall recovery, and however that shapes out to be, whether it’s individuals coming back as full-time residents there, individuals coming back maybe as part time.”

Patel agreed that “it’s a sensitive issue” given the location of the property in the burn zone and its use prior to the fire for short-term rentals. But he pointed out that homes are also being rebuilt in the area again, and bringing people back is part of the recovery process “from the devastating events that happened.”

“If we keep things empty and not allow access, then I think we’re hindering and delaying the overall rebuild of Lahaina,” he said. “And the conversation about whether or not something can be used for vacation rentals or not, that conversation is going to have its day in the council, and we’re going to talk about that as a community and we’re going to give feedback. And so, as it stands now, they’re allowed to reopen under the conditions that exist. 

“And we have to start moving on and we have to start rebuilding the town. And, we have to all listen to each other.”

Around Lahaina Roads, there are a handful of trailer homes set up on lots as people rebuild. On Wednesday afternoon, Bob Rocco sat relaxing on a chair as his sprinkler watered the grassy yard of his former home. Rocco bought into the neighborhood directly across the street from Lahaina Roads in 1996, back when there were still small houses with nice yards and plenty of mango and plumeria trees. Eventually the prime oceanfront land turned into the multimillion-dollar homes of off-island owners.

Since the fire, Rocco has had occasional run-ins with tourists, who sometimes mistakenly drive down his dead-end street and then scrape the high curb of his driveway on their way out. Another time, he was at a separate Wahikuli property that he inherited from a friend in an area surrounded by burned-down properties when a tourist pulled into his driveway and asked, “Do you know where the burn zone is?”

But, despite those encounters, Rocco isn’t worried about tourists potentially returning to Lahaina Roads, saying the visitors who came before the fire “keep to themselves” and don’t cause parking issues because the stalls are located underneath the building.

“They don’t bother me,” Rocco said. “They’re kind of on their own little island over there. So they’ve never really been an issue that I can think of. They manage it pretty well.”

Maui County Council Member Tamara Paltin, who holds the West Maui residency seat, said “I’m super stoked for the residents to be able to go back to their home.”

“I don’t necessarily have strong feelings, but I do know a lot of my constituents feel like it’s a bit soon to be inviting tourists to stay within the burn zone,” Paltin said.

Paltin said if she were a tourist, she wouldn’t want to stay in the burn zone given the surroundings and lack of activities in the area. However, she said having tourists in the area could provide a boon to surviving businesses down the road like Coco Deck and Mala Ocean Tavern.

She said if people come, she simply asks that they be respectful.

“Don’t traverse private property and stuff like that, and don’t go into areas that are barricaded without permission,” Paltin said.