Maui Planning Commission considers allowing hotel in Kīhei tech park

Thirty years ago, the Kīhei Research and Technology Park in South Maui was created as a hub for high-tech companies that could help diversify an island economy reliant on tourism and big agriculture. But now the business park could become home to multiple hotels if property owners get the green light from the county.

Andre Hurst of Regency Namakua is asking the Maui Planning Commission to decide if a hotel could be built on his 2.68-acre vacant lot in the tech park, which in recent years has expanded into a 400-acre master-planned development now known as Līpoa.  

“There’s lots of businesses that are in the park and there’s lots of expansion, a lot of housing, so we’re hoping that any use that we build on the location will be used and utilized by not only people in the tech park, but in the Kīhei area and so on,” Hurst told the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative.

Hurst said Regency Namakua is only looking to see if a hotel could be built on the lot at 1355 N. Nihau Street but does not have “existing plans” to do so. The company provided the Planning Department with drawings of a 142-room Hilton Suites hotel “for illustrative purposes only.” However, Hurst said the company also is considering other options that include restaurants or business park offices.

The Maui Planning Commission deferred a decision on Regency Namakua’s request last week and asked for more information about how the hotel would serve the needs of the park.

If Regency Namakua were to move forward with a hotel, they wouldn’t be the only one. Līpoa Investments, the master developer and owner of the undeveloped lands at the tech park, also has plans for a hotel: a dual-branded 220-room Hilton.

It’s just one piece a much more largescale rebranding and expansion effort that aims to create an innovative community of housing, commercial and recreational facilities to complement the tech and research businesses already in the area. It’s also a reminder of tourism’s inescapable footprint on Maui, as visitors are already drawn to the tech park’s Maui Brewing Co. and will also likely come for future projects like the planned pickleball courts.

“The visitors do seem to find us up there,” said Gene Zarro, CEO of the South Maui Learning Ohana that in 2018 opened Kīhei Charter School’s new campus in the park. “There’s no doubt about it. … Between the brewery, the pickleball and the hotel, you’ll have a little triangle there of visitor industry.”

The complex, originally called the Kīhei Research and Technology Park, opened in the late 1980s on about 300 acres with hopes of attracting high-tech companies in the vein of Silicon Valley. It’s now home to facilities that include the U.S. Air Force’s High Performance Computing Center, the Pacific Disaster Center and the University of Hawai‘i Maui College’s Applied Research Laboratories.

In 1989, the Maui Planning Commission took a look at the uses that could be allowed at the park, said Kurt Wollenhaupt, planner with the Maui County Planning Department. They voted to set aside 50% for research and development; 40% for services, office and business; and 10% for manufacturing and warehousing. One of the uses allowed under services included an “inn for visitors of the R&T Park.” A former Maui County planning director confirmed the inn and other uses in a 2008 letter. 

In 2016, the county passed new laws to expand the park and rename it the Maui Research and Technology Park. That came with an updated master plan with a wider variety of uses as well as new zoning regulations that allowed up to 500 hotel rooms, according to Planning Department documents.

Eventually the new development was rebranded as Līpoa, a 400-acre master-planned community that calls for a combination of housing, mixed-use space, employment/campus space and parks. The first residential neighborhood of more than 120 single-family homes is expected to start construction in late 2026, with the first homes completed in 2027, according to a project update in April. 

The park’s expansion over the years created a complication: about 90% of the original project is under the new Maui Research and Technology Park zoning, while 10% remains under the original Kīhei Park zoning. 

Regency Namakua, along with a few other property owners that include the U.S. Post Office and the State of Hawai‘i High Technology Center, remain under the old zoning, so hotel use needs commission review. Hurst said any hotel, if built, would not be geared toward tourists but to the people who come to work in the park. 

“Our intention here is to look for the opportunity to build a small business hotel,” Hurst told the commission. “Not a Wailea village resort for tourists. Again, something similar to a business hotel that you would see in the Mainland in a business area.”

Līpoa Investments is opposed to the project, should it become reality. Erin Mukai, who represented Līpoa Investments at the Planning Commission meeting, said Regency Namakua decided not to participate in the change in zoning that the park underwent in 2016 that allowed for up to 500 hotel rooms.

She said the guidance from the county in 1989 and 2008 was “outdated” and that allowing a hotel on the property “could potentially set a concerning precedent.”

“The result could be unplanned and piecemeal hotel development or redevelopment across multiple parcels,” Mukai said. “The park was never meant to be another hotel resort area.”

However, Līpoa is currently seeking building permits for its own hotel that does not require Planning Commission review because it’s under the new zoning.  

When Hurst asked if Līpoa’s hotel plans went against Mukai’s statement that the park was not a space for hotels, Mukai said, “I don’t think I said it in those words. I said the park was never meant to be another hotel resort area, like Wailea, like Kā‘anapali.”

Hurst told the Hawaiʻi Journalism Initiative he did not participate in the zoning change because he had been pursuing a new skilled nursing facility on a neighboring lot of the tech park. But after the project was denied by the state Health Planning and Development Agency in 2015, Hurst said it was too late to join the zoning change process. 

Considering how much the park has “evolved into a more varied and comprehensive community,” the Planning Department said in its report to the Planninc Commission, it “may be an appropriate location for additional and varied uses, including that of a hotel.”

Dick Mayer, a former economics and geography professor with Maui Community College, remembers attending conferences in the early 1980s hosted by local business leaders to discuss how to diversify Maui’s economy. The tech park was born from those talks.

“In one way, you could say that might be ironic” for the tech park to have a hotel, Mayer said, though he added that it could be seen as a component of the tech park to house workers.

He said he wouldn’t be opposed to a hotel if there were enough people coming to work there to support it. “But if it’s just going to be a tourist hotel, then I would think we shouldn’t build it,” he said.

However, he also said there could be a need for a hotel especially if the council decides to eliminate more than 7,000 short-term rentals in apartment districts. 

But Mike Moran, president of the Kīhei Community Association, is not so sure, even if the short-term rental ban does pass.

“Do we need more hotels?” Moran said. “We’re trying to say we’re overburdened with tourism.”

The tech park is mauka of Pi‘ilani Highway and not adjacent to the beach. But given the prices of hotels on Maui, which are consistently among the highest in the state, Zarro said, “I think the tourists will stay wherever they can find a room they can afford.”

Zarro, who’s been a property owner in the park since 2005, said he didn’t think there was currently a need for a business hotel, but “there’s no doubt” that it would fit the original mission of the tech park to entice big companies to send workers there.

“There could be some benefits to it if they stick to their plan, that it’s going to be like a workingman’s hotel to accommodate maybe family visitors to employees in the park or business people that need to transact business in the tech park,” Zarro said. 

Commissioners questioned whether a hotel would serve the needs of the businesses and not just tourists in general. Commissioner Mark Deakos said “it’s just unenforceable” and difficult to prove that the hotel is catering to the businesses and workers in the park.

“If there is a need, a clear need, I would love to see that,” Deakos said. “I don’t know the need yet.”