Isle residents save
Pau Hana Inn
Rather than see it close,
By Russ Lynch
they formed a nonprofit to
take control of the hotel
Star-BulletinIn an unusual community effort, a group of Molokai residents has formed a nonprofit organization that has taken over the old Pau Hana Inn on the Kaunakakai shoreline.
The move prevented the 40-room hotel from closing down, keeping its accommodations open as well as the beloved Banyan Tree Terrace bar and restaurant, long an entertainment mecca for Molokai residents and a delight to tourists who found it.
DeGray Vanderbilt, a 15-year resident of Molokai, led the organization charge that began in the community after the owner, Molokai Beach Ltd., announced it would close the hotel on May 31. "We got 2,000 signatures on a petition, not bad out of a population of about 7,000," Vanderbilt said.
Although admitting to some caution about the proposal, Molokai Beach signed an agreement of sale with the community group, which adopted the name Pau Hana Ohana.
Molokai Beach had earlier agreed to sell its 38-room Hotel Molokai, farther east on the waterfront, conditional on would-be buyer Kimo Keawe of Honolulu coming up with the financing.
Terms of that deal and the Pau Hana Inn arrangement are being kept confidential and the legal side of the Pau Hana deal has a some way to go.
"We have an agreement. This is a community-based organization. It's not a legal entity yet. There's still some paperwork," said Reina Garcia, a spokeswoman for Molokai Beach.
But the partnership went along, she said, hoping mostly that if the worst should happen and the ar-rangement fails, Molokai Beach will get the hotel back in no worse condition and in no more debt than it was before the deal."I am pretty amazed," Garcia said. "At the beginning you kind of don't take one of these propositions seriously. (But) DeGray got things moving and got it substantiated in writing," that there was in fact a group willing to step in and take over, she said.
"They made us an offer to purchase it, contingent on letting them operate it June through September, while they get their finances together," Garcia said.
Garcia said she had worked for Norman Yett, one of the leading partners of Molokai Beach, who had moved to the mainland and died in January. She describes herself jokingly as "sort of a victim volunteer" for the remaining partners.
Vanderbilt said the community group took over last week and began operating the hotel over the weekend, with a full house thanks to some enthusiastic drumming up of business by the residents.
They advertised rooms as cheap as $19.95 a night for the startup, after a 50 percent discount, and printed hundreds of leaflets encouraging residents to tell their friends on other islands about the deal.
Vanderbilt said the community volunteers got a lot of help from others in the hospitality industry who want to see them succeed, offering bed linens, food and beverage, advice and other goods and services.
The Pau Hana was built on the site where the Seaside Inn opened in 1946. A Honolulu firm, B & C Trucking bought the Seaside in 1970, tore most of it down and rebuilt it as the Pau Hana, adding the bar and restaurant a year later. In 1986, Molokai Beach Ltd., which had built the Hotel Molokai in 1966, bought the Pau Hana and put both hotels under one management. In September 1994, Hotel Molokai closed its restaurant and bar, leaving that side of the business to the Pau Hana.
