LAHAINA, Hawaii — Over the course of nine generations, Archie Kalepa’s family has seen the shoreline of Lahaina, a town on the island of Maui, repeatedly transformed.
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Once home to the royalty of the Hawaiian kingdom, Lahaina’s shores became over the centuries a stopover for whalers plundering the seas, missionaries spreading the Christian gospel and plantation owners who opened canneries to prepare their pineapples for export. More recently, tourists have filled boardwalk galleries and restaurants offering dishes of ahi tuna and taro.
The relics of those layers of history turned to ash a year ago when a fire on Aug. 8 swept through Lahaina, claiming at least 102 lives. Now, as rebuilding begins, Kalepa, a community leader who has organized recovery efforts, is on the side of many who see an opportunity to prioritize the town’s deeper history over the economic interests that have dominated for decades.
That would mean transforming the famed boardwalk, removing some of the gift shops, restaurants and beachwear boutiques that dotted the shoreline before the fire.
“All this has to go,” Kalepa said as he examined the building’s foundations.
Faced with the massive devastation, authorities scrambled last year to relocate thousands of people, stabilize livelihoods and remove millions of pounds of debris, leaving many lots looking like blank slates.
Now they turn to the more difficult question of what rebuilding should look like. Options include proposals to relocate thousands of people to new areas, set back properties along the coast from rising sea levels and restore wetlands. At the heart of the debate lies a fundamental question: In a community shaped by so many different historical eras, what history should guide the future?
The discussion is particularly tense along the famous Front Street. Long ago, it was there that King Kamehameha I built a palace and established a capital, an area populated more recently by shops and restaurants.
Some are calling for a greater emphasis on the city’s indigenous past by restoring Hawaiian street names and turning the heart of Front Street into a pedestrian boulevard.
But in other corners, there is trepidation about the move to retreat from the boardwalk. Kaleo Schneider and his family own a building on Front Street that before the fire housed several businesses, including the Honolulu Cookie Company and a pineapple-themed gift shop. The property has been in the family for more than 110 years.
Schneider, a Native Hawaiian who lives on the island of Oahu, said her family’s ownership of the building dates back to her great-grandparents. Many of the property owners along Front Street have similar ties to the area, she said.
“I’ve heard talk of relocating Lahaina. But then it’s not Lahaina, is it?” Schneider said. “Lahaina is on the water. The charm is in the water.”
There have been other efforts over the years to restore more of Lahaina’s native history, particularly on the ancient inner island of Moku’ula, where King Kamehameha III had a residence in the middle of a fishpond that Native Hawaiian tradition regards as the sacred home of a goddess. After the rise of plantations and their demand for water, the pond became a stagnant swamp, and in the early 20th century Lahaina businessmen began a project to fill it in and turn it into a baseball field, a facility that has since been abandoned, according to a book about the site by the late anthropologist P. Christiaan Klieger.
Such burials of Native history have led to Lahaina losing its true identity, said Ke’eaumoku Kapu, who directed the nearby Na ‘Aikane o Maui Cultural and Research Center, which was destroyed in the fire. He said proposals to restore Moku’ula and alter street names could help restore that identity. “Right now is a good opportunity to do things right,” he said.
Gov. Josh Green said Lahaina will definitely see changes. Up to a third of Lahaina residents may have to rebuild somewhere other than where they lived, he said. State and school district officials hope to make 1,000 acres of publicly owned land on the hillside above the town available to relocated homeowners, he added.
Local officials have provided minimal guidance on what the requirements will be for rebuilding along the coast. A county statement said each lot “is a special case.”
That has left many coastal property owners waiting for answers. At the Lahaina Jodo Mission, a Buddhist mission founded in 1912 whose key buildings were destroyed in the fire, Yayoi Hara, the minister’s daughter, said her family was determining how to proceed. “We understand that difficult decisions need to be made,” Hara said. “And the longer the decision-making or even the conversation drags on, the angrier people will be.”
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