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Posted on: Sunday, July 2, 2006

Ka'anapali

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

Amfac gambled in 1962. With jet travel bringing increasing numbers of tourists to Hawai'i, the Big Five company opened the first hotel and golf course along a length of beautiful white-sand beach on Maui's west coast that would become an international destination.

The Ka'anapali coastline — once a 2-mile strip of kiawe and canefields with a beach popular among picnicking locals — would never be the same.

Amfac had banked on a stable statehood economy that would transform Ka'anapali into a second Waikiki. But as it grew to become a 1,200-acre resort community, many felt it was far superior to Waikiki's crowded, concrete jungle.

Ka'anapali was the first master-planned resort in the world. Amfac built a series of upscale hotels and, in the process, created hotel jobs for west Maui residents struggling with the decline of sugar. The community was skeptical, however, until Amfac promised to build affordable housing for workers.

Tourists loved Ka'anapali, and residents found ample work.

Nearby Lahaina — once a sleepy plantation town — found a chic cachet in its whaling past and became a new tourist haunt.

By 1970, nearly half of the state's 1.1 million visitors included Maui on their trip. Business leaders credited Ka'anapali, with its championship golf courses and exclusive shopping villages, for pumping up the Maui economy for nearly three decades.