By PETER SUR By PETER SUR ADVERTISING Tribune-Herald staff writer The parent company of Nani Mau Gardens was owing mortgage payments of around $20,000 a month when it stopped making payments on two mortgages totaling $3 million last June. Now
By PETER SUR
Tribune-Herald staff writer
The parent company of Nani Mau Gardens was owing mortgage payments of around $20,000 a month when it stopped making payments on two mortgages totaling $3 million last June.
Now that the landmark 53-acre property has been declared in default and its lender is seeking to put the property in receivership.
Multiple calls to Ken Fujiyama, the owner of Nani Mau Inc., at his cell phone and his office, and his attorney Richard Ing of Honolulu, were not returned Friday. The phones at Nani Mau rang unanswered, the parking lot was empty and the gates were closed.
Fujiyama is the owner of Hawaii Outdoor Tours, the company that owns the lease for the Naniloa Volcanoes Resort, and the former operator of the Volcano House Hotel.
The Edmund C. Olson Trust issued two promissory notes, for $1 million and $2 million, to Nani Mau on June 26, 2008.
“Nani Mau defaulted on its obligations under the notes on June 2011 when it ceased making payments, as required,” the trust alleged in a lawsuit filed in federal court in January. “As a result of Nani Mau’s default, and pursuant to the terms of the mortgages, (Olson) is entitled to foreclose Nani Mau’s interest in and to the mortgaged property.”
The lawsuit makes claims against both Nani Mau Inc. and Fujiyama.
Paul Alston, attorney for the Olson trust, did not know why Fujiyama needed to borrow the money, nor did he speculate why Olson, a major Ka‘u landowner, was involved in the transaction, other than to note that “that’s not its core business.”
Alston said that Fujiyama was delinquent a number of times in making payments before finally ceasing them.
“They haven’t filed anything, any motion. We’ve asked the court to appoint a receiver for the property, and that’s what’s pending right now,” Alston said.
“We’re concerned about how the property’s being maintained,” he said.
It’s not the first time one of Fujiyama’s properties has raised concern in the community.
Informed of Nani Mau’s situation, George Applegate, executive director of the Big Island Visitors Bureau, said by phone from New York, “I am sad to see that it is not working. I wish him well.”
Fujiyama has had choice words for Applegate’s promotion of the tourism industry in East Hawaii. Fujiyama, who resigned from the BIVB, said in a recent interview he would “fire” Applegate if he could. Applegate passed on a chance to respond, saying that any business that doesn’t do well is not good for anybody.
“I hate to see anything not working, because that’s one more challenge” for the economy, he said.
Nani Mau was founded in the 1970s by the late Makoto Nitahara, a Hilo resident, as a small-scale nursery. In 1987, Toyama Garden Hilo Corp. bought the nursery and transformed it into a large-scale botanical garden with a restaurant and gift shop. The gardens then hosted more than 120,000 visitors annually. Fujiyama bought the property in 1999 for an undisclosed sum.
Email Peter Sur at psur@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
