Hawaii plantation town fighting without tourism during the pandemic

Thursday, August 27, 2020

Hawaii’s communities that somehow endured the failure of plantations by transforming into tourist destinations are highly stressed as the virus attack keeps the visitors away.

The newly developed Paia Community Association has estimated that about 40% of the Maui town’s around 71 shops and restaurants are either closed temporarily or permanently in the community on the island’s north shore, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Sunday.

Health restrictions like a 14-day mandatory quarantine for visitors coming from outside the state have almost jeopardized the tourism sector that accounts for about 25% of the economy of Hawaii.

The Paia economy that depended heavily on the Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. had by now moved toward businesses like boutiques, restaurants and galleries when in 2000 the company’s mill closed permanently.

Without visitors and shoppers the sidewalks, streets and parking areas of Paia have become the resting places of the vagrant and have become even more prevalent, residents and business owners said.

In Koloa on Kauai, where the first large-scale sugar plantation of Hawaii was set up in 1835, The Beall Corp. owns Old Koloa Town, a collection of historic plantation-era buildings.

A handful of Old Koloa Town’s 19 shops and restaurants have shut down and the company is working with tenants on rent relief.

“Ninety-five percent of our projects rely on tourism, and I don’t see there being any replacement of that. We’re more or less in a hold-your-breath situation until tourism returns,” President Cory Beall said.

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