Remove ImagesMaui County
The Maui 10
Who’s the county’s most powerful player?
February 22, 2007
RANK PREVIOUS COMPANY
1
3 Dowling Co.
2
1 Weinberg
Foundation
3
2 Maui Land
& Pineapple Co.
4
4 Maui
Electric Co.
5
- Goodfellow Brothers
6 6
Tesoro Hawai`i
7
7 Alexander
& Baldwin
8
8 Wailuku
Water Co.
9
9 Hawaiian
Telcom
10
10 Monsanto
Hawai`i
MASTER OF MAKENA
Everett Dowling, the President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer
and Director of the Wailuku-based development firm Dowling Co., was
already immensely powerful before his acquisition of Seibu
Corporation's Makena Resort two weeks ago. And his plan to build 71
super-luxurious, multi-million dollar condos right on Maluaka Beach has
long been approved. In fact, publications like The Maui News don't even
bother to question either his "Building in Balance" motto or his
promise to make the Makena condos "green." This is despite the fact
that the standards of the U.S. Green Building Council (which Dowling
professes to honor) specifically say "Avoid Environmentally Sensitive
Sites"—like Maluaka Beach in Makena! But now, his hooking up with
Morgan Stanley Real Estate and Trinity Investments to buy the Maui
Prince Hotel and all of Seibu's expansion plans—you know, to build
another Wailea-sized community of hotels, homes and condos—means that
Dowling is now pretty much the master of Makena.
NEW KID
The absorption of Makena Resort into the growing Dowling empire made
space on The Maui 10 for a new member: construction firm Goodfellow
Brothers, Inc. The brothers Goodfellow—Bert, Jack and Jim, Sr.—founded
the company in Wenatchee, Washington way back in 1920. Primarily, they
built dams—big ones, like Grand Coulee, and ones not so big, all over
the U.S. And they also build a lot of stuff here in Hawai`i. "In 1972,
Jim Goodfellow Jr. and son Steve, bid the Kihei Sewage Treatment Plant
in Hawaii for Boeing Co.," states the Seattle Daily Journal of
Commerce's website. "That job began a surge of work in Hawaii where the
current generation, Steve and Dan, sons of Jim Jr., are located. The
company has permanent offices in western and eastern Washington,
Oregon, Alaska and Hawaii." With Goodfellow's combination of close ties
to the development community and willingness to donate money to
political campaigns, they're a natural fit for The Maui 10. MTW