A Keaukaha fixture for more than 50 years might be gone by this time next year.
Members of the Hilo Yacht Club will decide later this year whether the club will remain at its current location or move to a new building.
The yacht club’s 55-year lease with Kamehameha Schools will end in June 2018, said Spencer Oliver, general manager of the club. Before then, the club’s membership and board of trustees will have to choose between remaining at the complex on Laehala Street, or leasing a different property.
“The members are torn,” Oliver said. “But there’s a lot of attachment for the old club.”
Oliver said the club’s board of trustees has negotiated a deal with Kamehameha Schools, owner of the current club property, and Edmund C. Olson Trust II, the owner of the Wainaku Executive Center, the club’s potential new location.
Oliver said the club, which marked its 100-year anniversary in 2013, began searching for potential new properties earlier this year when negotiations with Kamehameha Schools appeared to stall.
“We looked at Wainaku just as a bargaining point at first, but we started to realize it might be an actual option,” Oliver said.
Negotiations subsequently began with Kamehameha Schools on friendly terms and have concluded with a positive deal, Oliver said.
“They’re both very favorable deals,” Oliver said, although he was unable to disclose specifics of either.
Alapaki Nahale-a, Kamehameha Schools’ senior director of regional strategies for Hawaii Island, said the relationship between KS and the club has been amicable from the start and hopes his offer will convince the club to remain.
Nahale-a also could not reveal details of the deal, but said there is a need for the new lease to “incorporate and grow” the Keaukaha community.
“Keaukaha has the highest concentration of Hawaiians on the island,” Nahale-a said. “We want to build a relationship between the club and the community.”
Nahale-a also said he is very sensitive to the needs of the Keaukaha community and added that club leadership was very receptive to the need for close ties.
Although Nahale-a is confident Kamehameha Schools’ deal will ultimately sway club members, he conceded that, should the club choose to leave, Kamehameha Schools will work to accommodate the club’s move as best as possible, potentially allowing the club to remain past the June 2018 deadline while renovation work at the new location is completed.
The potential new site, the Wainaku Executive Center, was listed for sale in 2014 and has remained on the market since then.
Despite the two deals already finalized, Oliver said the club is still investigating other location options as insurance, although he doubts they will be necessary.
Oliver said the board of trustees will present the two deals to the club’s more than 500 members by the end of this month. Members will then be polled for their preferences, with the results to be tallied by an independent contractor.
However, while the collective decision of the club’s members will be taken into account, Oliver said, the ultimate decision will be made by the 13 members of the club’s board of trustees.
Email Michael Brestovansky at
mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
