Keauhou Resort
to reopen
in March

Sam Choy will operate
the restaurants at the
renovated Big Isle hotel

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Aston Hotels & Resorts has set March 1 for the reopening of the 314-room Keauhou Beach Resort and says isle chef Sam Choy will run the restaurants that he is helping to create.

New facilities at the Big Island hotel, which closed abruptly at the end of April when new owners took over, will include a Sam Choy Restaurant and two other restaurants guided by Choy and his team, said Fred Mayo, the hotel's general manager.

They will be part of the Let's Eat Hawaii group, run by a partnership of Choy and KBL Food Services Inc., which is owned by long-time Honolulu restaurant operator James H.Q. Lee. Lee's family has run the Hee Hing on Kapahulu Avenue for many years.

One of Choy's innovations at the hotel is the Ocean View Veranda, an oceanside lanai lounge that will serve drinks, pastries and other goodies to early risers, starting at 5 a.m., and supplying sandwiches and other meals later in the day, said Choy's administrative assistant, Renee Dyer.

Choy also will have his business based at the property, watching over the other Let's Eat Hawaii restaurants, the Sam Choys on Maui, at Diamond Head and in Kalihi, San Diego and Tokyo.

The hotel's owners, Southwest Value Partners of Scottsdale, Ariz., are spending $15 million to renovate the hotel's rooms and public areas. The former owner, Japan-owned Azabu USA Corp., shut the hotel and fired its 165 workers after it couldn't get the terms it wanted in a lease renewable negotiation with the Bishop Estate. Azabu let the estate take the hotel and walked away from it to concentrate on its other Hawaii holdings, including the Ala Moana Hotel.

The estate in turn sold the Keauhou Beach Resort to Southwest Partners and granted Southwest a new lease. Southwest retained Aston, now part of Memphis, Tenn.-based ResortQuest International Inc., to manage it.

Southwest, which also owns the Aston Maui Islander in Lahaina, said its former employees will get a chance at jobs when the 30-year-old hotel reopens.