Larry Ellison Closes on $500M+ Purchase of Lanai from Castle & Cooke

by Adriana Pop, Associate Editor

Larry Ellison, founder and CEO of Oracle Corp., has completed his acquisition of 98 percent of Lanai, Hawaii’s sixth-largest island, from David Murdock’s Castle & Cooke. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed, although the price is estimated at more than $500 million.

The Pacific Business News reports that with the purchase of Lanai, Ellison becomes the fourth-largest private owner of land in Hawaii, after Kamehameha Schools, Alexander & Baldwin Inc. and Parker Ranch on the Big Island.

Ellison’s purchase included 88,000 acres of land, as well as two resort hotels — the Four Seasons Resorts Lanai at Manele Bay and the Four Seasons Resorts Lanai, Lodge at Koele — and two championship golf courses and club houses, The Experience at Koele and The Challenge at Manele. The state currently owns 2 percent of Lanai, which has a population of about 3,200 residents.

David Murdock took ownership of the island in 1985, with the purchase of Castle & Cooke Hawaii Inc. With the construction of the two resorts he transformed Lanai’s economy from agriculture to tourism.

“It is very gratifying to me personally to see Lanai now in the hands of Larry Ellison, a very committed individual who will bring his ideas and energy to sustain the beauty and heritage of Lanai,” Murdock said in a news release.

In other news, the Kauai Planning Commission has approved Hunt Development Group’s proposed 46,800-square-foot grocery-anchored shopping mall in the center of Kilauea Town.

According to The Garden Island, the Kilauea Lighthouse Village will be located on Kilauea Road, across the street from Kong Lung Center. The project will include a market, hardware store, auto-parts store, drugstore and pharmacy, health clinic, bank, food establishments and office space.

Opponents of the project argued that the new development could harm local businesses and increase traffic in an already congested area. Matt Hunt, development manager at Hunt Group assured commissioners that during construction workers would use a temporary road in the back of the development. The Planning Department eventually granted the permits on the condition the company take action to mitigate traffic in the event the temporary road becomes inoperable.

Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons