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The Maui 10
Who’s the county’s most powerful player?
by By Anthony Pignataro
September 13, 2007
RANK
PREVIOUS
COMPANY
1
1
Monsanto Hawai`i
2
2
Dowling Co.
3
5
Maui Land & Pineapple Co.
4
3
Tesoro Hawai`i
5
4
Alexander & Baldwin
6
6
Weinberg Foundation
7
7
Wailuku Water Co.
8
10
Maui Electric Co.
9
8
Goodfellow Brothers
10
9
Hawaiian Telcom
WOOD NYMPHS?
ML&P moves up a couple notches this week for finally—FINALLY!—getting a Maui County Land Use Committee hearing on its vaunted Pulelehua project in West Maui. Now there’s a lot to dislike about Pulelehua—the traffic it will generate and its much too cozy proximity to Kapalua Airport, most notably—but it does a rate positive nod or two. For instance, somehow Maui Land & Pineapple actually managed to get an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) done on the proposal. For those following the incessant whining from Governor Linda Lingle and officials from Hawai`i Superferry, Inc.—also partly funded by ML&P—and the state Department of Transportation, you’d think getting an EIS done was an onerous, anti-business shackle designed by Luddites to make Hawai`i a subsistence economy in which we all grub for worms while scantily-clad wood nymphs dance and soft, naturey music plays in the background. Actually, that doesn’t sound half bad…
HOME FALLS
ML&P would have risen a lot higher this week, were it not for the news that in August the median price of a single-family home on Maui plummeted to a mere $644,000—down from $749,500 in August 2006. With prices that low, how do you expect land developers like Maui Land, Dowling Co. and A&B to make any money? Builder Goodfellow Brothers didn’t drop because they build a lot of other stuff.
MTW