In the 1960s, Tim and Peggy Morrow purchased 714 Front Street in Lahaina and opened The Gallery, selling Ming vases, antiques, pearls, jade and a whole fashion line of clothing they would import during their travels to China and other parts of Asia.

“It was a little big of a hodgepodge,” said Morrow’s great granddaughter Allison Herzog.

When Tim Morrow passed, the family tried to run the store, “but we couldn’t without him,” so the 2,000-square-foot building was turned into two stores they leased. But on Aug. 8, 2023, the Lahaina wildfire burned the family building to the ground and destoryed the businesses of their tenants: Elephant Walk gift shop and Lioness.

Herzog said her family immediately knew they wanted to rebuild, and as historically accurate as possible: “I’m a fourth-generation landowner and so it’s very important to me personally and to our family that it stays looking like my great grandfather’s building.”

But Saturday will mark three long years since the fire. Not one recovery building permit has been issued for a commercial property destroyed on Front Street.

It’s been frustrating to Herzog and a few other land owners who have served as guinea pigs in the complicated process to rebuild a historic town located in a special management area due to its proximity to the ocean and with known concentrations of iwi kūpuna (ancestral remains).

But they are blazing a path through the maze of federal, state and county codes and regulations. And soon, the first commercial building permit for the area is expected to be issued. It is 612 Front Street, which had housed the Pacific Whale Foundation, Maui Hands Art Gallery, Andrew Shoemaker Fine Art Photography and a foil boarding rental company in a kiosk.

“We’re close,” said Ryan Churchill with Pacific Rim Land, which manages the property for landowner AJI LLC. “We’re very close and expect to have building permits in the coming weeks. We’ll start construction immediately thereafter.”

He said he was receiving calls earlier in the month when a county official misspoke at a Lahaina Recovery Meeting on July 1 and said the property already had been issued a building permit. A county news release also says one commercial building is under construction.

This is not the case yet. But Churchill said on July 30 that all the property needs now to receive building permits for its primary building and a kiosk is “the final sign off from the county department.”

Churchill said the property has received all other necessary permits and completed all requirements, including the Archeological Inventory Survey from the Hawai’i State Historic Preservation Division.

If all goes smoothly, Churchill said construction would take about nine months for the buildings, with a bit more time needed for the tenants to build out their spaces. He said they would like to have Pacific Whale Foundation return, but that is “still to be decided.”

The plan is for an opening of summer 2027.

Herzog, who applied for a building permit in May 2025, said two weeks ago the only major challenge left to overcome is the archeological survey. But she said it has been difficult because “there just aren’t a lot of archeologists available to do this work.”

She is hopeful once this hurdle is cleared, 714 Front Street also will be issued a building permit.

Walk through the historical commercial district that for decades was the economic engine of the town and contributed tens of millions to the county and state coffers and not much progress is visible —except for work being done at the Lahaina Harbor, and a newly paved road and rebuilt seawall with freshly planted trees and flowers that was an approved country project before the fire struck.

During a July 2 press conference, the county announced a short-term plan to help businesses in Lahaina with the launch of ʻUlu o Lele, an interim marketplace and community gathering space being developed by the nonprofit Hawaiian Council. It is slated to operate two years while the permanent commercial rebuilding begins to take place.

Erin Wade, deputy manager of Maui County, said during that press conference that progress is “difficult to see sometimes when you’re not seeing shovels in the ground yet.”

But she said there are a lot of activities happening behind the scenes that now will help expedite the construction and rebuilding of Front Street.

At the press conference and a public meeting in Lahaina the day before, Wade rattled off five properties on Front Street that had received a permit, by which she meant historical district approval. She said during an interview on July 28 this means those properties received approval from the Cultural Resources Commission or got administratively approved based on the new Commercial Design Guidelines, which were just adopted May 7. It also means they received State Management Area approval or an exemption, and if needed, a flood development permit and shoreline setback permit.

In addition to 612 Front Street, Wade listed four other properties that had historical district approval. They are 632 Front Street, which she said is the Pāʻia Fish Market  or “the old Burger King for most of you,” and three on the 700 block of Front Street: 714, 724 and 764 (the Yonker Building).

“These buildings represent multiple tenant spaces, so it might be one permit, but it’s several opportunities for business,” Wade said.

She also said two other properties were “on the verge” of getting historical district approval, including the “Fleetwood” building at 744 Front Street. Because the building shell survived the fire, “itʻs a full restoration, so itʻs a little more complicated.”

A dozen or more other commercial properties are in pre-application consultation with the county, she said.

For the first couple of years after the fire, Mayor Richard Bissen repeatedly said the priority of the county was to rebuild burned residences that displaced about 12,000 people. He said it again at the July 2 press conference: “I really, really want to thank our commercial and business owners for their patience and their willingness. We made it very clear at the beginning that we were going to build residential back first. And that is what we’ve done. In fact, we said, owner-occupied residential first. And that’s what we gave priority to.”

As of Aug. 1, 557 homes have been rebuilt, and hundreds of others have been issued building permits or in the process of obtaining them, according to the county’s Maui Recovers website.

No rebuilding could start until the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed the huge task of debris removal, which took a little over a year. During this time, there also was a push by some in the community to reimagine Front Street and the bustling historic/commercial district that lured tourists from around the world. Some advocated for turning it into public space that also could serve as a memorial for the 102 known people who died in the fire.

The mostly local owners of the prime real estate wanted to rebuild, saying it also was important for the businesses and the people they employed. And, the concensus of the members of the Front Street Recovery Group that was formed after the fire was to rebuild as historically accurate as possible under modern codes.

“Exactly what we had before,” Herzog said of her own building’s plan. “Well, exactly to the extent possible. … There might be a couple small modifications for current code, so a different pitch of the roof or whatnot, and better air conditioning.”

Afterall, why rebuild Front Street differently? It was celebrated in 1997 as one of the Great Streets in America by the American Planning Association.

The association’s reasons: “Front Street packs in everything that makes Lahaina, Lahaina: wooden storefronts, second-story balconies, public parks, art galleries, eateries, residential quarters, whale-watching tourists, children scurrying to and from school, elderly couples taking early-morning walks, bicycles and vehicles sharing the road, divine views of the majestic West Maui Mountains, Lahaina Harbor and island of Lanai, and an archeological site dating to the year 700.”

Kent Untermann, who owns 736 Front Street, said: “At first there was talks of moving Front Street up on the sugar mill. I’m like, ‘Guys. No. It was Front Street because of the water. You can’t get away from the water, otherwise it’s Disneyland.’”

His property and the property next door, 730 Front Street owned by Mousa Hassan, originally was one building called Chun Wa that was built in the early 1900s. It was subdivided in the 1950s, with the two properties sharing a common wall.

“We’re going to go back to its original form as part of the spirit of what the county’s trying to do,” Untermann said. “So, they’re excited about that, and it was Mousa’s idea to court Kimo’s, because they’re on the water, and we’re not sure if the water’s going to come back. But we needed a bigger footprint to accommodate them.”

The combined building will be 17,000 square feet, with 10,000 feet upstairs for Kimo’s, the popular restaurant, and 7,000 square feet downstairs for three retailers: Tori Richard, Crazy Shirts and Untermann’s CocoNene. It will have a full-length, second-floor lanai and parapet street façade consistent with historic precedent, according to its schematic design package.

“We’re close to submitting for permits, but we’re just going back to be the Chun Wa, go back to the roots, so we’re working out details like egress, ingress, balcony distance, sidewalk distance, laterals,” Untermann said. If all goes well, he’s hoping to get the building permit in six months.

Having the tenants with leases in place will help when it comes to financing.

“Costs have gone way up,” Untermann said. “It’s pretty scary. … In round numbers, it’s $1,000 a square foot. We’re looking at somewhere in the $17 million range to rebuild.”

Untermann said the goal is for his building and others in the 700 block to all open by 2028: “We’re trying to get a little bit of critical mass.”

Herzog said some properties in the 600 and 800 blocks of Front Street may be on track for that timeline, too. “A grand reopening together,” she said.

Other commercial property owners, including Warren Freeland, say he is the “very early in the pre-development process. We’re just getting started.”

He owned the historic Pioneer Inn, and said he just recently received fire insurance proceeds that were needed before he could move forward. Because of the later start, Freeland said he thinks the permitting process will go more quickly and be less frustrating that it was for the early birds.

“There were major roadblocks, and the county started addressing those last fall,” he said. “That was really the catalyst for most of the property owners to begin their process. The mayor issued (recovery coordination) directives that mitigated issues that were absolute roadblocks to rebuilding on Front Street.”

For example, under the county code, the rebuilding of a destroyed building was considered new development that required road-widening and undergrounding of utilities. “And that is just something that isn’t feasible along Front Street, with all the small parcels,” Freeland said.

He added that a reason some of this could be streamlined is because most properties “were just wanting to rebuild what they already had.”

Untermann said the county had done a good job in the past three months of trying to consolidate issues that are holding up the permitting process, especially approval from the state Historic Preservation Division.

“We’re hoping pretty quick here it’s not going to be nearly as big of a challenge,” Wade said.

The county and state Historic Preservation Division have been working for two months on a programmatic agreement that would allow construction to move forward in the same way that the debris removal process did when the Army Corps was working on the property.

Jessica Puff, administrator with the state division, said because the agreement is narrowly targeted to recovery in the Lahaina burn area and property affected by the Kona lows, she think it can be worked out by September. The agreement would have different tiers, and some could be handled internally by the county. They could include those being rebuilt on their original foundation or footprint with little disturbance to the land.

“It’s tricky when you’re in a recovery situation because you definitely want things to be expedited because people want to return home. They want to start their businesses. They need to make a livelihood. They need to live,” Puff said. “We’re trying to make that happen, but we need to be respectful because this geographical area has so much rich history and is culturally significant and is home to descendants. It’s where iwi kūpuna lie.”

If a property owner needs to build a deeper foundation, or dig deep for utilities, grease traps or elevator shafts, then it becomes more critical that an archaeological inventory survey is completed to look for iwi kūpuna prior to construction, she said.

Puff acknowledged that there is a shortage in the state of archeologists needed to conduct the surveys. Neither the state nor county has staff to do this work. She said the state applied a year ago for a Special Historic Preservation Fund grant through the U.S. Department of the Interior to hire people for archeological monitoring and surveys, but it was not awarded.

Wade said the county now is working on some “very unsexy” items like sewer clean-outs and stormwater retention/filtration to help with the commercial rebuilding.

Sewer clean-outs are supposed to occur on people’s properties, but because of the small lot sizes she said the county is working internally on a memorandum of understanding between public works and environmental management to allow for those clean-outs to happen in the sidewalk.

Wade said the county also typically requires on-site drainage, which means a retention basin or something else to prevent stormwater runoff. But again because of the small lots, the county will work next on using existing county parking lots to provide that stormwater retention and filtration.

“Both the Prison Street parking lot and the Luakini Street parking lot are low points in the district,” Wade said.

But the county can’t help the four properties on the ocean side of Front Street that overhung the water. The state has canceled their over-the-water leases, which means their rebuilding footprint would be much smaller.

Those properties are eligible for the county’s “Strategic Voluntary Mitigation Buyout Program,” which is funded with $50 million from the county’s  Community Development Block Grant for disaster recovery.

Wade said 10 commercial property owners, some with multiple lots, are eligible to be bought out. She said so far no applications have been submitted by any of the shoreline owners, but there have been some discussions, with only one looking to potentially rebuild while at least three have indicated an interest in a buyout.

“If I click on this parcel, you can see  the lot size is only 1,800 square feet,” Wade said. “So the evaluation they’re all processing in their mind is can I actually get the return on investment I need if I have to do all of this engineering on the side of the street where there’s inundation issues.”

There are about 140 or so destroyed commercial and public buildings in the burn zone. Most have yet to start the rebuilding the process as they wait for insurance and other payouts, and for the county and state to work out the complicated permitting.

“None of these rebuilds I can just take a plan off a shelf and put it on Front Street,” Wade said. “Every single one is a custom build, and custom builds take a lot of time and energy and consultants. A lot of the folks who are being asked to rebuild have either inherited or bought an existing building and haven’t been through this process.”

She said the county is creating a concierge service to “kind of hold their hand through the permitting process because it really isn’t second nature. It does take an effort to understand the whole thing.”

Meanwhile, Herzog and others have helped chart a course with persistence, showing where issues lie, including with things as simple as being able to put awnings on a building, as they were historically.

“You can’t have awnings; they aren’t part of current code,” Herzog said she was told. “So we talked to the Maui County Office of Recovery to help with a proclamation because awnings is something we want.”

Herzog said she now feels optimistic, even though she still has the Archeological Inventory Survey and other challenges to meet.

“I guess I’m pretty stubborn, so I just wouldn’t stop,” she said. “I’ve thought it was very important to rebuild Front Street from the beginning. There’s no place like it in the world.”