Hawaii retail sector glows; retail space grows

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Hawaii retail sector glows; retail space grows
Pacific.bizjournals.com - Aug 19 2004 16:37:4 GMT

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[Miulang]

Re: Hawaii retail sector glows; retail space grows

This ties into the whole WalMart brouhaha also. As retail space grows, what's happening to the farmers locally? What's happening to land that originally was zoned for families? What's happening to the small business owners?

When is Hawai'i going to move away from a tourist/monoculture society to one where local farmers are planting sustainable crops so people in the islands can eat well? Will Hawaii ever be able to be self sustaining?

Very few people up here realize that the cans of pineapple on the Safeway shelves more than likely were grown and canned in the Philippines or Thailand or Central America. The only local pineapples we see up here in the stores now are the "boutique" fresh ones from "Maui Gold". Maui Pine realizes that they can't make money on canning local pineapples (thank you Steve Case) but they can make money selling fresh pineapples for $3.98 a pound up here.

One of the scions of the Atherton family and his hui have just purchased the assets of the Molokai Coffee Company, which includes some acreage above Maalea, which was used for agriculture. According to the Maui News, the hui hasn't yet decided what they want to do with the land but that they bought it because A&B was selling it. But does any sentient being really believe that the hui will keep the land agricultural? My bet is more condos will go in, or at the very least, a few very pricey homes on those 200+ acres of agricultural land. It'll probably take a few years because of the change in status of land use, but I think it's inevitable...where I remember seeing acres of waving stands of sugarcane will soon become nice large ticky tacky houses with fenced in yards.

There's a development that was planned for what used to be a landfill near Sand Hills. They started excavation for the new homesites recently and managed to collapse a retaining wall or two of the neighbors. This is not why I left Maui, and it certainly would be a reason for me to return home to fight against things like this.

The Maui County council did do something that amazed (and pleased) me last week, though. They placed a moratorium on issuing new water meters for South Kihei and Central Maui. Somebody(ies) finally figured out that you can't promise people something (water) that is rapidly dwindling in supply due to explosive population growth. So at least for the time being, if you want to own a house on Maui, you have to buy one that already exists (or at least a piece of property that already has a water meter).

Maybe the kanaka maiole have it right, and Bruddah Iz certainly got it right when he wrote and sang, "cry for the gods, cry for the people, cry for the land that was taken away and then yet you find Hawaii...All the fighting that the King had done, to conquer all these islands now these condominiums, how would he feel if he saw Hawaii nei? How would he feel, would his smile be content, then cry..."

Miulang