Jeff Stone’s Princeville Hanalei Plantation has launched permitting for a new low-density hotel to be called Princeville Lodge. It would be constructed on the ridge above Hanalei Bay that has been in play and the subject of intense community controversy for decades as a potential resort or luxury home development.
“We felt that a small, upscale, environmentally sensitive hotel project could be designed for this site, satisfying virtually all the major issues raised by the community about previous developments here,” Stone said.
“It ensures permanent public access, creates a low-visibility design in size, architecture and color, and it uses a smaller footprint than any previous built or planned resort on this site,” he added.
It would consist of cottages and a clubhouse, nestled in trees along and below the ridge line. A walk through the property on Monday suggested that many of Stone’s hotel units would have unobstructed views of the Hanalei Pier, Hanalei Beach and Black Pot Beach.
The project would be built more or less on the same site that has been used for at least a half-dozen development projects — some of which were built and operated for a time and others of which never got past the planning or early construction stage.
It is the same land on which billionaire Pierre Omidyar proposed to construct a 200-unit hotel and luxury home complex. But Omidyar was forced to pull out after intense opposition arose from the Hanalei community.
Although Stone has no direct ownership stake in the St. Regis Hotel, people familiar with his Princeville Lodge proposal see it as creating direct competition for high-end travelers with the St. Regis.
The Omidyar property in question was once the site of the Kauai Club Med and has history as a hotel location starting in the 1960s.