Keolu Shell owner quits
By Eloise Aguiar
Advertiser Windward OÎahu Writer
KAILUA — Few Christmas decorations grace Wes' Keolu Shell service station this year, ending an 11-year tradition of bright lights, ribbon-decorated trees and yuletide banners — and marking the closing of the Windward business at the end of the month.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
Station owner Wes Kurihara stopped decorating after he decided to close amid rising costs and dwindling revenue. Holiday decorations aren't the only thing the community will miss when the station closes.
Holiday decor is sparse this year at the usually festive Shell station in Enchanted Lake.
Wes' Keolu Shell offers automobile repairs, propane and a place where community groups hold car-wash fund-raisers in which he paid for the water. The station employs more than 20 people.
Kurihara, 57, said he was hoping to hold on for a while longer, but felt he had no choice when he received a notice that his rent would go up and word from his banker that he was running out of money.
He had started to put up his Christmas trimmings, but gave up after receiving the rent notice.
"I don't have the fight for it," Kurihara said, adding that he had given the handmade red and gold bows to a customer to decorate one of the Norfolk pines on a hillside between Castle Junction and Kapaa Quarry Road.
"I was hoping I could get business going in a positive way," he said. "I even cut back my own pay just to sustain the business."
He dipped into his retirement fund, but that didn't help for long, Kurihara said. He tried to negotiate a deal with the company in which he would run the business and Shell would own it. He was turned down.
"The oil companies have no compassion today," he said, adding that he had asked for some help surviving. "You cannot blame them personally, but they make their margin before we sell the gas, and we make pennies."
Barbara Kornylo, California manager for corporate affairs for Equilon Enterprises — which markets under the Shell and Texaco brands — said the business is very competitive and she couldn't respond to Kurihara's request for help.
Kurihara and the company agreed to end the relationship, Kornylo said.
"It wasn't like we were forcing him out of his business," she said. "We sat down and negotiated, and it was mutually agreed upon."
A decision about the station's future has not been made, Kornylo said.
Customers expressed shock.
They praised Kurihara for his support of community car washes for the Boy Scouts, soccer teams, hula halau, baseball teams and even an Aloha Parade princess.
"We're really disappointed," said Mareno Gulisao, 63, a lifelong Kailua resident who has patronized the station for 11 years. "There's nothing but good to say about Wes and the people who work for him — the service, the integrity."
Longtime customer J.R. DeMello was upset that Shell hadn't done more to keep Kurihara's business open.
"All he wants to do is service his customers," DeMello said.
Reach Eloise Aguiar at eaguiar@honoluluadvertiser.com.
