New Hope buys
Pau Hana Inn

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Star-Bulletin staff

After three years trying to sell the historic Pau Hana Inn with hopes of keeping it alive as a hotel, Molokai Ranch Ltd. has sold it to a religious group for less than $1 million.

The buyer of the nearly six acres of fee-simple land and 40 rooms is New Hope International, part of the New Hope Christian Fellowship.

Peter Nicholas, president and chief executive officer of Molokai Ranch, said that "every time we got somebody to look at it (as a hotel) they felt that the cost to renovate it was too much."

Would-be hotel operators estimated they would have to spend about $2 million to get it back up and operating as a hotel, he said.

"We were approached about three months ago by New Hope Church -- and also by the Catholic Church, which wanted to turn it into a Father Damien memorial -- and New Hope came up first" with an acceptable agreement, Nicholas said.

"We're very sad to see it not be a hotel," but it has been deteriorating and the ranch company had to have a security guard there all the time, costing money, he said.

Officials of New Hope, taking their regular Monday off, were not available for comment yesterday. Molokai sources said the church plans to use it as a retreat.

The Pau Hana Inn was built in 1970, just outside Kaunakakai on the site where the Seaside Inn was opened in 1946. For decades it was a center of local-style night life. It closed in the late 1990s.