LAHAINA — Maui wildfire survivors Michele and Qiana Di Bari were able to move back to their Lahaina home last year, but they say it has been at least six months since they have visited Front Street, where their decade-old restaurant Sale Pepe Pizzeria e Cucina was lost to the flames.
The couple, who loved the bustling, quirky, melting pot-feel of historic Front Street before the fires, say going there now reinforces the trauma of what they and other Lahaina residents experienced.
It’s been two years since the nation’s deadliest fire in more than a century burned Lahaina town to the ground and killed 102 people. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its federal, state and local partners have cleared all of Lahaina’s commercial and residential lots, and more than 40 homes have begun to emerge from the ashes. But the process of recovery is proving slower for Front Street’s historic and business district, where some properties must go through more onerous permitting steps, and there are still deep divides about what the future should look like.
The famous, more-than-150-year-old banyan tree is coming back on Front Street and the view planes to the ocean are wider, but many other historic landmarks and buildings are gone. On Monday, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser saw empty streets and sidewalks and gravel-filled lots instead of the many businesses that once drew tourists and kamaaina alike.
Qiana Di Bari said, “Where we live everybody is rebuilding all around and it feels great. That feeling is not down there yet. It feels stagnant. It feels sad.”
Her husband, Michele Di Bari, agreed, “It’s just brutal.”
Maui Mayor Richard Bissen said securing a $1.6 billion Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) after 19 months of effort provides a path forward, and “we are focused on Front Street right now.”
Bissen said “a considerable sum” has now been set aside for infrastructure on Front Street, and the county has started hardening the seawall, which he said is “significant to the rebuilding of Front Street and the commercial area.”
Long road ahead
Theo Morrison, executive director of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation, said in an email to the Star-Advertiser that in the Front Street commercial district, which is between Baker Street on the north and Shaw Street on the south, all buildings made from wood were burned to the ground.
“I do not know how many, but there were at least 175, I think. Most of the cement or stone and coral block buildings survived with walls or partial walls only standing,” Morrison said “The exception to that is the Plantation Store, now known as the “Fleetwoods Building,” which also had a cement roof and cement floors which survived.
Morrison said the timeline for a complete restoration of the whole town is unknown as many factors are at play.
G.Warren Freeland, a representative of the Front Street Recovery, a coalition of 73 generational Lahaina landowners dedicated to rebuilding and revitalizing Lahaina’s historic Front Street, said that he hopes to rebuild his family’s historic Pioneer Inn, which was leveled by the fire.
The Pioneer Inn, originally built and opened for business in 1901 by Freeland’s great- grandfather George Freeland, who married a Hawaiian woman Amabel, holds countless memories for travelers passing through the islands as well as residents, including Bissen, whose mother worked there.
Freeland said Front Street Recovery was formed to provide a singular voice for Front Street’s commercial properties with a focus on those in the historic section between Prison and Baker streets.
“One important thing to understand is that everybody that we’ve talked to within the hui just wants to rebuild what they had before this fire,” he said.
Maui County Planning Director Kate Blystone said the county sought to ease rebuilding by waiving the SMA (Special Management Area) major permits for wildfire-affected properties mauka of Lahaina.
The county estimates that about 22 commercial properties and 64 residential properties will not qualify for the SMA waiver because they are on the shoreline itself. There are roughly 106 parcels in the Lahaina impact zone’s historic districts, and all but about 10 or 11 are commercial, the county said.
Freeland said the Pioneer Inn is not considered a shoreline property, but he like many other commercial owners will not begin permitting until the entire process becomes clearer.
He said that the Maui County Council passed Bill 105, which granted an exemption within the burn zone so that property owners could rebuild nonconforming buildings with nonconforming uses. But he said many Front Street property owners are waiting for the county to hear Bill 110, which addresses the portion of the current county code, which views properties that are completely destroyed and rebuilt as new developments.
“That could trigger things like road widening, sidewalk improvements and undergrounding of utilities or other things that might be required of a new development,” Freeland said. “Many of the properties were built wall to wall with no setbacks or separation, so if they were required to have the current setbacks, it would have a large impact on what could be built and whether or not it’s feasible.”
John Smith, Maui County’s Office of Recovery administrator, said when his office met with the county’s planning, public works, and infrastructure departments to examine the county code, officials quickly realized that “it wasn’t really designed to build back a town.”
“Right now we are trying to adjust those standards to meet what the town wants to be per the community’s request (in the Rebuild Lahaina Plan),” he said. “We are looking to produce some design guideline documents this year so that when the commercial property owners come in they will know just exactly how much land that they will need to give up in order to make the property work and the town come back. It’s not just a zoning issue or a setback issue, it’s also a utility issue.”
Waiting game
The Di Baris decided to temporarily reopen Sale Pepe at 157 Kupuohi St. in March. Their restaurant was the first lost in the Lahaina fire to rebuild and reopen in Lahaina Town, but the couple still hopes to return to Front Street.
Qiana Di Bari said, “Front street is a fundamental part of Lahaina and so we won’t be whole until we have that piece of us back. It’s like we are missing a right arm.”
Jack Starr, assistant general manager of Kimo’s and now of Leilani’s on the Beach, said TS Restaurants also hopes to return its flagship restaurant to its Front Street waterfront location. He was filled with nostalgia on Monday as he visited the concrete slab where the popular eatery once stood.
“This restaurant, right now, created everything for me,” said Starr, who also lost his home in the nearby Kuhua subdivision.
“We’ve been offered three properties on the mauka side of Front Street. We are definitely interested, but we are not rushing to a decision,” he said. “We’d like to build it back as it was. What we and other business owners are trying to do is bring back a town that offers a place for residents to gather and work and holds allure for our visitors.”
Blystone said not much is happening commercially on Front Street, but that some mauka residential properties are moving along since the SMA waiver. Additionally, she said that the Maui Planning Commission recently granted an SMA major permit to Michele Long at 21 Kai Pali Place — the first home on the makai side of Front Street to get one. Blystone said three other applications are in the hopper, including 1045 Front St., Stanley &Dilara Deal Trust’s home rebuilding project, which goes back to the planning commission on Tuesday.
Blystone said, “What I’m finding in front of the planning commission is they are not tolerating what was there before and they have approval authority on the makai side of Front Street. … They want the historic character to be reflected in the rebuilds on the makai side, they want native plants, they want more resilient designs.”
Ekolu Lindsey, whose family home at 393 Front St. was destroyed in the blaze, said most Front Street residential owners are watching to see how the planning commission reacts before pursuing their own expensive permits.
Lindsey said when he does build, he plans to move his home inland of the shoreline erosion hazard line.
“Even if they came back and said you could build as (it) was, where (it) was, I wouldn’t want to because it’s just smarter to build closer to the road and prepare for another event that’s going to happen whether it’s a tsunami or sea-level rise,” he said.
Kai Nishiki, who chaired the West Maui Community Plan Advisory Committee, which produced the circa 2021 West Maui Community Plan, said it favors managed retreat, and many policies and action items prioritize parks and open spaces over shoreline development.
“There’s never a better time than a clean slate to see that the silver lining (is being able to determine) what works, what didn’t work, (and) what do we want for the the future,” Nishiki said.”Why would we want to set people up for death and destruction and a lot of financial impacts when we have an opportunity to do better right now?”
She said that she views the removal of the concrete support columns for the structures built over the water along Front Street between Dickenson Street and Papalaua Street as a move toward resiliency.
“People are happy to see the beach, see the sand that you can walk on,” Nishiki said.
Smith said the county has sent 16 letters to property owners on the makai side asking them to consider selling properties to the county that have been identified as key to providing additional beach access.
Though Lindsey agrees with Nishiki that it’s better to err on the side of caution and nature, he said that his conviction stops short of telling other residential and commercial owners who cannot move construction inland not to rebuild if they are willing to assume the liability. He also supports restoring Front Street’s commercial district because it would provide jobs and “bring back the memories.”
“For most local families that are on the beach, the perspective is … Mother Nature give ’em, Mother Nature take ’em away. It’s all right. If we’re not meant to be here, she is gonna let us know,” Lindsey said.
Source: The Garden Island
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