Lanai City, Hawaii

History

Lānaʻi was once the home of the pineapple plantation of entrepreneur James Drummond Dole, which spanned over 20,000 acres (81 km2) and employed thousands of workers. Dole owned the entire island for a time, and in the 1920s built Lānaʻi City to house and serve the workers. It was the first model city in Hawai‘i. In 1923 several stores, a bank, a hospital, a theater, a church, and business headquarters were built around an open park space. In 1930 model homes for couples featuring two bedrooms, a large living room, and a kitchen, with running water, electricity, and spacious yards were erected. The single men's houses had three furnished rooms and also running water and electricity.

In 2009, the corporation Castle & Cooke, which had spun off from the Dole Food Company, announced its intent to demolish much of what remained of the historic district, including homes, a laundromat, and a jailhouse—all dating to the 1920s—in order to build new commercial structures. The development would have included a supermarket the National Trust for Historic Preservation called "oversized" and "out-of-scale". No intact plantation towns remain on any of the other Hawaiian Islands.

In 2012, Castle & Cooke sold its island possessions (totaling 98% of the island) to Larry Ellison for $300 million.

From the History section of Lānaʻi City, Hawaii on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.