Maui Real Estate & Development

Wells Fargo, trustee for the registered holders of the commercial mortgage securities of which secured the property, filed a foreclosure lawsuit on Monday.  Everett Dowling and Morgan Stanley’s partnership, created to purchase the 1,800 acre resort, owes $192.5 million in principal, interest and late charges.

Dowling Company and Morgan Stanley bought the resort and hotel just a little over 2 years ago from Seibu Group of Japan.  Though the future of Makena Resort is uncertain, Dowling Co. is moving forward with its other Makena Project called Maluaka.  This development has been considerably altered in plans from 69 luxury condominium units to 13 custom homes and a club house.

To read more about this latest Maui Real Estate News, see the BizJournal Article.

UPDATE:

Maui Prince Resort to Stay Open with Name Change!

The Maui Prince Hotel will now be called the Makena Beach and Golf Resort.

Prince Resort Hawaii told the public that it would be shutting down the Maui Prince in 2 weeks, but Wells Fargo bank, trustee of the resort, countered this statement by saying they will keep it open and that funds have been made available to pay off vendors and suppliers that were owed as well as continue payroll.

Management will need to be restructured as the Maui Prince Resort has been showing around a 1 million dollar loss per month.

The Maui Island General Plan provides a guide for the future growth of the island to the year 2030. The Maui Island Plan establishes a vision and a set of long-range guiding principles, goals, objectives, policies and maps to guide the growth and development of the island.

At this time, this Maui Island General Plan is in the “stage 2″ of the review process.  First, the Planning Director took the recommendation of the GPAC (General Plan Advisory Committee). Second the Planning Director’s original draft as well as the newly revised draft with GPAC recommendation are reviewed by the Maui Planning Commission. So far the Maui Planning Commission  had 3 meetings on this already.  A few more meetings are scheduled with the Maui Planning Commission before they finalize their own recommendations regarding the location and amount of future growth for Maui. If you are interested to come, below are the dates, time and location:

August 4, 2009 from 1:30 PM to 8 PM in the Lahaina Civic Center

August 18, 2009 from 9AM to 5 PM in the Planning Department Conference Room

August 25, 2009 from 9AM to 5 PM in the Planning Department Conference Room

This Maui Real Estate And Development Blog will feature the Maui Island General Plan.  A series of posts are coming up here on this topic for us to weigh in on this very important decision for the Maui Island.  Stay tuned and looking forward to your comments.

On June 24th, 2009, a small town public forum was held at the Good Shepherd Church Hall in Wailuku, Maui.  The WMSA (Wailuku Main Street Association) Tri-Isle Main Street Resource Center hosted the event to further educate about the community-based issues of the new plan.  The program, “Maui Island Plan: How It Effects You,” was held for discussion between Maui County representatives, community stakeholders, and the public.

This meeting comes after the Draft Maui Island Plan was received for review on April 21st.  The Planning Commission was given 150 days to review and modify it before passing it on to the Maui County Council.

Members of the panel expressed concern about loss of small town identity.  With 1 policy to act over all areas, it was argued, there will be incongruent policy.  Different areas require different approaches. Examples were cited like the differences between growing industrial towns like Kahului and small farming communities like Kula.

Community leader Jan Yagi Buen explained that the overall problem with the new plan was that it is massive in comparison to the 1990 plan, something that would be difficult to modify.

Other issues with the plan are the lack of specifics in allocating water as well as the protection of diminishing agricultural lands.

A major foreseeable problem in Maui’s future is a lack of education and future jobs.  Once our kids graduate from High School, there’s really not much available to them on Maui.

Long Range Senior Administrator John Summers said, “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us still.”