Co-founder of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison paid $500 million and change for the island of Lanai. First purchased by Dole over a hundred years ago as a pineapple plantation, that business moved on in the 80’s. The recent owner, Castle & Cooke CEO David Murdock, tried to get a wind farm on the island to service the nearby heavily populated islands, that plan has been withheld for years pending government approval. Reportedly the sale includes the ability for Murdock to put wind generators on the island later if it’s approved. I’m assuming either Ellison doesn’t believe it will be approved or doesn’t care because it wont affect his plan for the island. What is his plan you ask? No one knows, he’s not saying.
So he now owns 154 square miles, 98% of the island (the remaining is private property and government installations). There are around 3,200 people living on the island in privately owned houses the remainder is abandoned pineapple farms, open land, and unspoiled beaches. There are a handful of new empty resorts an a couple of odd shops. Unfortunately water is rare commodity.
If you were a billionaire and just purchased Lanai what would you do with it?
Plant coffee, given the price of Kona is so high purely because it’s rare. And, start building a rainwater-collection system to provide water for the resorts I’ll be building.
Kona is a market name that can only be applied to coffee grown in the Kona districts on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Lanai does’t reach the same elevations as are found on the Big Island, so that the ideal coffee growing conditions found in the Kona districts may not occur there.
My own golf course. And I don’t even golf! But I would if I had that island Also, as many non-domestic animals as legally possible/biologically feasible. So, my own little petting zoo.
Oh, and horses. Horses for fun and horses for stud and horses just so there would be horses. And I’d hire my sister to come out and manage all the horses. We could offer short, half-day jaunts around the island, to ride or play golf or pet red pandas, but that’d be it. The tourists would have to go home by nightfall, lol.
Build a private space port. Not one of those scummy villainous ones, more of a Burt Rutan type. Start a ranch of exotic hybrids - like those camel/llamas I just read about. Sell ultra rare cama wool to the world.
Exactly the opposite. I would relocate as many non native species as possible to give the native plants and animals a chance to recover. Together with planting and breeding programs there would be a slow but steady improvement in the island foliage which reduces the erosion and water requirements for the island.
If I needed to make enough money from the island to make it self supporting (How much do I have left after I bought it?) I would create small “green” resorts on the beaches and limit tours to the centre of the island to guided and controlled ones.
Under my ownership Lanai wouldn’t be a party island but a quiet relaxed vacation for people willing and able to spend a lot of money for the experience.
I’d make it a “forbidden island”, like Niihau, and set up comfortable housing for people of Hawaiian descent so that they had a place to live that wasn’t swamped with tourists.
Also, as many non-domestic animals as legally possible/biologically feasible. So, my own little petting zoo.