LĀNA‘I CITY — Blue Ginger Cafe owner Phoenix Dupree doesn’t always see the guests who vacation at Lāna‘i’s two luxury resorts, where wellness spas, lagoon-style pools and high-end restaurants often keep them on property for the entire duration of their stay.

But enough resort guests come to town to dine and shop that he thinks the exclusive enclaves are a positive impact for the island.

“It would really hurt our small business community if we didn’t have that engine driving us,” Dupree told the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative.   

That’s why residents like Dupree see few issues with resort expansion plans by Pūlama Lāna‘i, the management company created by the world’s fifth-richest person, Larry Ellison, to oversee operations on the island of about 3,300. The billionaire founder of tech giant Oracle purchased 98% of Lāna‘i in June 2012. 

Last month, Pūlama Lāna‘i asked the Hawai‘i Land Use Commission to rezone about 170 acres from agricultural and rural to urban land so it can build nine villas and five more spa units for Sensei Lāna‘i, a Four Seasons Resort perched on the windswept slopes of Kō‘ele. The rezoning would also allow the resort to upgrade pastureland into a commercial event space and turn a former golf course into a public park. 

The proposal will be up for review at the commission’s July 15 meeting on Maui. 

But while many see Lāna‘i’s fortunes as tied to the resorts, others feel like they are slowly losing the last traces of a historic area that was once the center of the ranching industry and revered in Hawaiian culture.

“Kō‘ele has always been the heart of the Hawaiian community on Lāna‘i,” said Simon Tajiri, a Hawaiian language immersion school teacher who spoke on his own behalf.

Under Ellison, Sensei has transformed from a cozy upland lodge to a luxury escape where rooms surpass $1,000 a night with “a rotating collection of daily activities such as yoga, meditation, fitness classes and lectures,” according to its website. Guests start their stay with complimentary, semi-private flights from Honolulu and customize their wellness retreats under the direction of “Sensei Guides” and practitioners.

Formerly the Lodge at Kō‘ele, the resort closed in 2015 to undergo an estimated $75 million in renovations and reopened in 2019 as Sensei, with 96 rooms and suites, 10 private spas and amenities that included onsen baths (traditional Japanese hot spring baths that are geothermally heated), an 18-hole golf course and an adventure park with ziplines and rope challenges. 

Now, Pūlama Lāna‘i says another round of upgrades are needed “to remain competitive in the market.” The company is eyeing 11.5 acres adjacent to the resort for expansion, including up to nine villas that would serve as an additional room option for Sensei guests, five individual spa units known as “spa hales” and four resort buildings that could be used for flex space, employee offices and maintenance.

The villas are especially important to Pūlama Lāna‘i because other wellness retreats offer them as an option for guests, the company said in its application. The resort also needs the new spa hales because the 10 currently on property are already at capacity. 

“Feedback received from guests includes offering additional types of rooms and ensuring that they are able to receive all wellness treatments desired during visits,” the company said.

Pūlama also wants to upgrade 14.6 acres of Lāna‘i Ranch pastureland to hold special events such as outdoor dinners or weddings. Currently the space is used as an amenity for resort guests and organized events for the community.

Another 83 acres that are part of the former golf course that closed in 2017 would turn into a park that may include a sculpture garden. Ellison’s love of sculptures is well known on island, with behemoth installations at both resorts and an over 80-foot sculpture by Swiss artist Urs Fischer that sits on the Mānele Golf Course and is meant to resemble a breaching whale.

The company is seeking the zoning change because the new villas and commercial events “are currently not possible on agriculture and rural designated land,” according to the application. 

Of the 170 acres, about 95 are agricultural and nearly 75 are rural, including about 61 acres of Lāna‘i Ranch pastureland, a barn with stables, paddocks for the animals and a riding arena.

Most of the land is part of the Kō‘ele Project District, which was permitted for residential, multifamily, hotel, open space, public, park and golf course, according to the application.  

Pūlama, which declined an interview request, said in a statement to the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative that while it is expanding the resort, the total size of the project district would decrease by about 8 percent. Resort residential land would also be reduced by 72%, “with majority of those areas reclassified to park and open space, eliminating future resort residential development rights previously approved but unbuilt,” the company said. Park and open space land would increase from 23.5 acres to more than 315 acres.

“While the application includes a modest 11.5-acre area to allow for limited expansion of Sensei Lānaʻi, a Four Seasons Resort — supporting an important local economic driver — this represents a small component of a much larger net downzoning effort,” Pūlama said.

Lāna‘i doesn’t see many tourists, with fewer than 12,000 visitor arrivals in 2025, the second-lowest in the state after Moloka‘i, according to Hawai‘i Tourism Authority data. 

But those who come spend more per day than tourists on any other island by far. In 2025, Lāna‘i visitors spent an average of $908 per person per day, with Maui a distant second at $326 per person per day. 

“Our resorts here are very high end, and although we have less hotels and less customers, overall the amount of money they bring in to this island is substantial,” said Alberta de Jetley, a local journalist who now runs Lāna‘i Taxi. “So it’s providing good jobs for the people who live and work here.”

Butch Gima, a retired social worker who’s lived on Lāna‘i for 52 years, said Sensei is “the only resort in Hawai‘i like that, away from the beach and it’s more kind of a lodge-type of atmosphere and environment.” Guests can do everything on property. Some venture out for hiking and horseback riding, but there’s not a lot of shopping or nightlife to explore beyond the resorts. 

“This is a very niche market that they have for Sensei,” Gima said. “Because the whole reason and the business model for a Sensei is that they’re so exclusive and they have so much more money that they’re going to come whether or not there’s a recession.”

Gima remembers when Pūlama brought its plans to the Lāna‘i Planning Commission a couple of years ago. Gima, who chairs the commission, said the project presentation was a massive packet of documents with lots of minutiae but “few specifics on why they requested” the changes. 

“It kind of seemed like they were just inundating us with a lot of information hoping we just gloss over it and rubber stamp it,” he said. “That’s the impression I got.”

It took several meetings, but eventually the commission approved it without conditions because there were no issues with the application itself. 

“There was nothing we could really deny them on it,” Gima said.

Maui County Council Member Gabe Johnson, who holds the Lānaʻi residency seat, said that the main concern the community had about the expansion was the future of the two historic Richardson homes that once housed plantation workers.

De Jetley grew up in one of those homes. Her family moved from Moloka‘i to Lāna‘i in 1951 and lived next door to the Kwon family. At the time, Kō‘ele was a ranching community, and there were about 21 houses. But by then, most of the houses were vacant, and the company started to demolish them, she said.

The ranching and pineapple industries drove Lāna‘i in those days, and de Jetley’s life was heavily influenced by both. She learned to ride horses from the age of 7 and spent every day in the saddle. She and her brother would rise at 4 a.m. to ride their horses over the mountain to hunt goats with Uncle Ernest Richardson, for whose family the homes were named.

Her mom worked in the pineapple fields, and at age 15 when she was old enough to join, de Jetley and all of her friends started picking pineapples, too.

De Jetley chronicled the history of Lāna‘i in the book series “Images of America,” and founded the now-defunct Lāna‘i Times and Lāna‘i Today, which she sold to Pūlama Lāna‘i shortly before the pandemic. She worries about the Richardson homes falling into disarray and hopes they can be restored and maintained, perhaps as historical sites closer to the road where many tourists drive by.

“Those buildings mean a lot to me,” she said.

Pūlama Lāna‘i said it has “committed to relocating the structures approximately 500 feet from their current location, outside of the project area, and preserving them for future uses, including a museum honoring the area.”

The community’s love for Kō‘ele goes beyond the Richardson homes. Tajiri said the area is a wahi pana, or sacred place. When he and his students sing the famous song “Lei Kō‘ele,” that speaks about the beauty of the drizzling rains and winds of the uplands, he feels a pang of sadness knowing that many of his students have never been able to visit a place reserved only for ultra-wealthy adults.

“I understand that there’s different kinds of economic concerns … but to me, the true economy, the true health, is when you connect people together,” Tajiri said. “I can imagine a different kind of tourism where it connects to the community and there’s an exchange. … Come and see the people, come and be with the people, and let the kids be better connected to that place.”

On Sundays, Tajiri attends services at the Hawaiian language church next door to the resort, singing songs in ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i with the congregation and feeling “that spirit of old Kō‘ele, the way Lāna‘i was before.”

Johnson said Kō‘ele has become like the resort areas of Maui where locals only go for work. He agrees that there’s a sense that there is little the community can do when it comes to the resort’s plans.

“It’s just part of living on Lāna‘i,” he said. “The company owns almost everything.”

Monopoly ownership of Lāna‘i has been a problem long before Ellison and Pūlama came along, Gima noted. The black plastic mulch leftover from the days of the pineapple plantation and the rows of Cook pines escorting new arrivals down the main highway are reminders of wealthy past owners who have included James Dole of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, who purchased the island in 1922, and David Murdock of Castle & Cooke, who acquired it in 1985.

“When you have one major landowner, the power and control issues are paramount,” Gima said. “There’s (been) a power and control imbalance within our community for over 100 years.”

Gima said some people are still afraid to speak out against Pūlama Lāna‘i, but not as much as they were under the previous ownership, partly because President Kurt Matsumoto is “a local boy, and he doesn’t wield a heavy hand like the management used to do when it was Castle & Cooke.”

“Nevertheless, there’s still the perception that, ‘oh, I don’t want to rock the boat,’” Gima said. “We don’t have an activist community as a result of that.”

On Lāna‘i, few things are untouched by Ellison’s company, which employs hundreds of residents, leases out commercial space to many of the town’s businesses, including Blue Ginger Cafe, and owns critical services like the gas station and water company. And while it does make some people reluctant to speak out against the company, residents point out that Pūlama has also done a lot to make the town a cleaner and better place to live.

Kert Shuster, owner of Rainbow Pharmacy, said the island “was deteriorating” before Ellison bought it. He remembers when “green sludge” was growing on the bottom of the local swimming pool and the facility was shuttered to the public during budget cuts.  

Today, the Olympic-sized swimming pool is clean, heated and open to the public for lap and open swimming. Over the years, Ellison and Pūlama Lāna‘i’s many projects have included improving the water system, opening a four-lane bowling alley, building the 150-unit Hōkūao affordable housing project and renovating aging, termite-ridden homes. Ellison bought a CAT scan machine for Lāna‘i Community Hospital so patients wouldn’t have to go off island.

Shuster, who leases the building from Pūlama, said the company even renovated the space on its own dime before he opened the pharmacy.

Shuster said there are two kinds of people on Lāna‘i: those who wish it were slower-paced and less developed like Moloka‘i and others who are happy with what Ellison has done. In his opinion, the island has changed for the better while still preserving its charm. 

“I think he’s just trying to make this place sustainable, but not turn it into a wasteland of Kmarts and Costcos like Maui,” Shuster said. 

Like Dupree, Shuster sees the resorts as a vital piece of the local economy. 

“Without the resorts, this place would be doomed,” he said. “There would be zero capital and infusion, nothing coming in.”

Dupree has lived on the island for 35 years and is generally supportive of the company because they provide most of the jobs on the island, saying: “Why would you want to bite the hand that feeds you?”

As a small business owner, he said he didn’t have objections to the resort expanding. Residents don’t have much of a choice — “over here we gotta kind of roll with the punches,” he said — but he thinks the island is better since Pūlama came along.

“Everything that helps Pūlama Lāna‘i … helps lift the whole community,” he said.

When asked if the revenue and community upgrades are worth the trade-off of having a billionaire owner, Gima said, “there’s no doubt that he (Ellison) has much deeper pockets than Murdock, and it’s beyond question how much money he’s infused into the community.” That includes Pūlama’s decision to pay employees and keep them on health insurance for the first several months of the COVID-19 pandemic and its support of a program to help Lāna‘i students earn their associate’s degree while still in high school.

Gima said he thinks people are more concerned about surviving at a time of rising costs than about whether Pūlama’s pros outweigh the cons. But he hopes people will be willing to speak up and stay informed when it comes to projects that affect the island.

He said: “We need to have more discussions and get more people involved and not just accept the fact that this is the way it’s going to be.”