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Makaha Golf
Club, hotel sold

Buyer Towne Realty
of Milwaukee has
longtime Hawaii ties

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By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Milwaukee-based Towne Realty Inc. said today it has purchased the Makaha Golf Club and the former Sheraton Makaha Hotel, whose 196 units were shut down in 1995.

The deal also includes the properties' 350 acres of fee-simple land. The price was not disclosed and Towne Realty, which has had real estate developments in Hawaii for more than 20 years, said it is not ready to say what it intends to do with the West Oahu property.

"We have many exciting plans for the property" that will be disclosed later, said Chris Lau, president of Towne Development of Hawaii, a Towne Realty subsidiary.

The seller, ANA Hotels Inc., filed a notice with the state Labor Department in August saying it would lay off all 64 employees as of today because the business was being sold.

Lau would not comment on the fate of the employees.

ANA, a subsidiary of All Nippon Airways Inc., bought the hotel and the 18-hole, par-72 golf course in 1979 for $9.5 million.

ANA was never able to make a success of the hotel. The company tried running it itself, brought in Sheraton Hotels in 1982 to manage it, later dropped Sheraton and went back to self-management. ANA finally gave up and closed the hotel in 1995.

The golf course remained open, later developing an area that had been used as hotel banquet facilities into a club house and restaurant.

Early this year, the Star-Bulletin reported that Ko Olina Co., moving ahead with $1 billion of development on its West Oahu resort, had agreed to buy the Makaha property, intending to use it as a recreation facility for those visiting and living at Ko Olina. That deal was subject to due diligence and eventually fell through, however.

The Makaha property was originally developed by Honolulu financier Chinn Ho, who opened the golf club and hotel in 1969. In the ensuing decade, Ho made several agreements to sell it but the would-be buyers failed to complete the deals.

Towne Realty is more than 50 years old and has residential, commercial and industrial real estate developments in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, Texas and Wisconsin.

Towne's Hawaii operations started in the 1970s with contracts for federal government work in the islands, such as improving military housing. The company went on to develop a number of significant residential projects in the private sector including condominium and single-family projects on Oahu and luxury apartments at Waikoloa on the Big Island.