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Kauai finds itself at a bittersweet crossroads
By Laura Bly, USA TODAY
KOLOA, Kauai
This winter's candlelight vigils and banner-waving protesters are gone,
their legal challenges exhausted.
Soon, bulldozers could roll past Koloa's wooden sidewalks,
clucking chickens and stop sign plastered with a "Die Developers Die"
bumper sticker, ready to transform a ragtag grove of monkeypod trees
into a shopping center.
But here in Hawaii's oldest sugar plantation town,
little more than a coconut's throw from the burgeoning tourist resort of Poipu,
the stymied effort to preserve what local shopkeeper Lee Jacobson Rowen calls
"the soul of Koloa" is a symbol of a much bigger fight for Kauai's identity —
and future.
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The paper continues: "For those who live here, the rewards are obvious.
The negatives are also evident: traffic, overrun areas that were
once secret or sacred, expansions of the tourism infrastructure.
And though that infrastructure benefits residents in many ways,
it also fosters the 'us and them' mentality.
Resentment builds (and) visitors become the target."
Targets or no, visitors are thronging to the island Elvis Presley put on the vacation map with his 1961 movie Blue Hawaii, one of more than 50 films that have used Kauai's lush, staggeringly gorgeous scenery as a stand-in for paradise.
A record 1.27 million tourists arrived in 2007, aided by a boost in non-stop flights from the mainland and almost-daily calls by cruise ships. Despite a statewide economic slowdown and slump in real estate sales, the outlook for Kauai — where at least a third of the island economy is directly related to tourism — is "more ebullient than any other part of the state," noted First Hawaiian Bank's Leroy Laney.
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If any property represents Kauai's struggle to find
a balance between preservation and growth,
it's the Coco Palms.
Opened on the island's east coast in 1953 amid coconut palms
planted by Hawaiian royalty, the hotel catapulted to fame
as the setting for Blue Hawaii but was never rebuilt after Iniki.
Despite a string of revival efforts — the most recent would have included
200 luxury condos and a fitness spa — it remains a crumbling eyesore
along the main highway, its blown-out roof shingles gaping like missing teeth.
"This place had the aloha spirit from Day One,"
says sixth-generation Kauaian Larry Rivera, 77.
Rivera started as a busboy and wound up as headliner, hobnobbing with the likes of Elvis and Ricardo Montalban, whose Fantasy Island series included scenes filmed on Kauai. He now croons Kauai, the Last Paradise during weekly gigs at the nearby Hilton, but still officiates about two dozen Blue Hawaii weddings a year from the same lagoon-side spot where Elvis said his celluloid vows.
A new Coco Palms plan, proposed in the Hawaii legislature late last month,
would use public and private funding to transform the onetime home of the island's last reigning queen into a historic park and cultural center — including the wedding chapel that helped bring Elvis, and Kauai, so much fame.
For his part, Rivera wants to see his iconic haunt returned to its resort glory days.
But he's mindful, too, of the lyrics to a song he recorded in 1999:
"This is one island, many peoples, all Kauaian. …
Hawaii belongs to everyone, to take care of and share."
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(http://asp.usatoday.com/travel...)
