Larry Ellison Rejuvenating Hawaii's Sixth-Largest Island (Which He Owns) 297
McGruber writes "In June of 2012, we discussed news that Larry Ellison, co-founder and chief executive of Oracle, purchased the Hawaiian island Lanai for $300 million. Ellison now owns nearly everything on the island, including many of the candy-colored plantation-style homes and apartments, one of the two grocery stores, the two Four Seasons hotels and golf courses, the community center and pool, water company, movie theater, half the roads and some 88,000 acres of land. (2% of the island is owned by the government or by longtime Lanai families.) Now Ellison is attempting to win over the island's small, but wary, local population, one whose economic future is heavily dependent on his decisions. He and his team have met with experts in desalination and solar energy to change the way water and electricity are generated, collected, stored and delivered on the island. They are refurbishing residential housing intended for workers (Mr. Ellison's Lanai Resorts owns and manages 400 of the more than 1,500 housing units on the island). They've tackled infrastructure, such as lengthening airport runways and paving county roads. And to improve access to Lanai, Mr. Ellison bought Island Air earlier this year and is closing a deal to buy another airline."
Re:impossible (Score:-1, Informative)
I suggest you read TFA (I know, I know, a taboo around here)
some of the more relevant parts to your comment:
For now, locals appear guardedly optimistic. "Not everyone will agree with what Ellison does, and you run into opposition from a few, but how can you argue with jobs and improving infrastructure? How do you disagree with things like the reopening of the community pool?" asked Phoenix Dupree, who runs the Blue Ginger Café and has been a resident of Lanai for 22 years.
Reynold Gima, a social worker for adult mental health who started the watchdog organization Lanaians for Sensible Growth to challenge some of Mr. Murdock's efforts, said he finds Mr. Ellison's management style "refreshing." It also helps that he knows and trusts Mr. Matsumoto, as many on the island seem to; the two men were in Little League and Boy Scouts together.
"They've been promised things before, but it wasn't fulfilled," Mr. Matsumoto said. So people are saying, 'I love the vision, but is it for real?' That's fair."
Diane Preza, a kindergarten teacher who was born and raised on the island and is a member of a group called Kupaa No Lanai, founded to fight wind development, appreciates the improvements on Lanai under Mr. Ellison, but she wants to make sure new developments are done right. "We love it and feel it needs to be protected," she said. "There are sacred sites, archeological sites. There is a way of life that we love."
In January, Mr. Ellison met with Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie. "As far as I'm concerned, he has not made a single misstep," said Gov. Abercrombie, a Democrat. "Unemployment on Lanai has just about disappeared. Traffic to the island is up. If nothing more than the economy, I would say he is the best thing that's happened to the island in 50 years."
Re:impossible (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. Ellison did not help invent the modern RDBMS. The concept of a DBMS started with Charles W. Bachman and later Edgar Codd refined the concept into the relational model. Please vacate my lawn.
Does he ? (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone wonder how all of this land came to be for sale ? And, how good his title is?
In the old Hawaiian monarchy set up by Kamehameha, the King owned all of the land. In the "Great Mahele" (division) of 1850, private land ownership was introduced, with 1/3 of the land going to the crown, 1/3 to the commoners, and 1/3 to the chiefs (the "ahupua" land, really a type of shared commons). Due to failure to follow through with paperwork, only about 1% of the "commoners" land was actually allocated to commoners. (I believe that there are only 4 acres on Lanai, out of 40,000 or so, that are actually available for fee simple purchase by the likes of us - that would be the old commoner land.) This old map [wikimedia.org] shows the division into Crown and chief lands after the Mahele. This article [disappearednews.com] describes how Claus Spreckels (a sugar baron) got fee simple for the entire island (minus the 4 acres, and some state land). Of course this was corrupt, but note the corruption appears to have occurred before the 1893 coup d'etat that destroyed the old Hawaiian monarchy and delivered the country over to the USA as a territory.
Does he have good title? I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc., but my guess would be no, not to all of it. The courts and political system in Hawaii tend to look very favorably to claims from Hawaiian natives about land ownership. There is an entire state bureaucracy, the Department of Hawaii Homelands, dedicated to returning crown lands (and other state lands) to Hawaiians. The DHHL has a land use plan for Lanai [hawaii.gov], which is full of more facts and maps about Lanai land history and ownership for those who are interested.
Here is my guess how this will proceed. Ellison will develop this and that and eventually do something that will seriously piss off Lanai locals, and then will be enveloped in clouds of lawsuits and political agitation until he sells the land. Having heard stories of the way he runs business meetings, and having had some dealing in Hawaii real estate at the Federal level, I think that predicting a collision is a good bet, and it would be highly unlikely to end favorably for Mr. Ellision.
Re:Ellison's an awful person (Score:4, Informative)
You're repeating incorrect facts on this story. If you read the actual story, the SJ airport (where he's been operating out of for more than 10 years) has a curfew on "weight classes" for planes, not stopping flights completely. And Ellison's plane can be operated in two different weight configurations, one of which is allowed after the curfew, which is the configuration he's used, backed up by his crews' logs, to land at SJ. The airport on the other hand has tried to use the argument that if the plane CAN be configured that way, it must be doing it. The judge in the case agreed with Ellison's logs and told the airport to pound sand:
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Judge-clears-Ellison-for-landing-at-night-2909426.php
Doing something you're legally allowed to do and then having some pencildick try to fine you for it anyway is not the definition of being an awful person. Ellison's done many questionable things, let's not muddy the waters by spouting misinfomation.
And as a side observation, if you buy a property next to an airport and expect quiet, you're gonna have a bad time. So don't bitch when you hear planes at night at an airport you live next to.