Hundreds testify against Boeing CEO’s Lahaina rebuild

By Yiming Fu, Report for America corps member

Stanley Deal, a Boeing executive, hopes to rebuild his Front St. home to retire along the Pacific Ocean. The Deal family first fell in love with Hawaii when they visited for Boeing customer events over the years, Stanley Deal said, prompting many more trips back to the islands. They bought the plantation-style home in 2016, bulldozed and renovated it in 2018. 

With flat roofs, glass walls and a swimming pool, the Deals stayed at the now $9 million house on 1045 Front St. for about 120 days a year.

If approved, the Deals’ house would be the first property to rebuild on Lahaina’s historic shoreline. This area faces a trickier permitting process because of environmental and shoreline concerns from rising sea levels.

Many locals think this rebuild cannot go as planned, worried about issues ranging from shoreline erosion, the Malibu-esque design which does not reflect the historic Lahaina, and fears of restricted shoreline access. They’re also frustrated with the swimming pool, which will drain resources from a town that faces a critical water shortages. Lahaina has affordable housing projects that cannot break ground because they lack water. 

Lahaina Strong organizer and generational Lahaina resident Courtney Lazo said the question is whether the house, built as planned now, will contribute or detract from the community’s wellbeing.

She wants to remove the swimming pool, add Native plants to the landscape plan, lower the boundary walls and maintain public access to the shoreline.

Lahaina’s shorelines are a cherished public space, Lazo said, which outsiders have been buying up and keeping locals out. Spaces where Lazo would fish with her family growing up are no longer accessible.

“Is it for us?” Lazo said. “Or is it for those who want to move here and want to turn it into something unrecognizable?”

More than 200 people submitted written testimony against the proposed rebuild ahead of an April 22 Planning Commission hearing. The hearing would decide if the Deals’ property can begin its rebuild on the shoreline, setting possible precedents for other rebuilds along the ocean. 

For testifier Tiare Lawrence, Lahaina beachfront homes have not benefited local families. Instead, they’re bought and flipped by out-of-state investors. 

“The couple requesting this permit doesn’t even live on Maui. They don’t fish these waters. They don’t surf these waves. They don’t walk this shoreline. And they definitely won’t be the ones dealing with the flooding, the erosion, and the loss of access once this home is built in a sea level rise zone.”

Hope instead of delay

The property follows all the rules, Deal said. The family followed the building rules in 2018 and followed all the rebuilding rules at the time they submitted the plan to the county. 

The Deals submitted their permit request early, just days before the county changed their regulations to be more strict on shoreline rebuilds. 

Tessa Munekiyo Ng from Munekiyo Hiraga consulting firm said the property has 30-40% native plants in the architecture design, will use turf to reduce water usage and include a sea wall to protect from erosion.

Ng also said the family plans to pump out the pool instead of draining into the ocean. They will also use a pool cover so the pool will use up less water.

Architect Atom Kasprzycki said the property is also built with fire-retardant materials, and is intentionally not designed in a historical manner in respect of actual Lahaina plantation-style architecture.

Those testifying for the Deals’ rebuild said it would be a symbol of hope and start the ball rolling for other shorefront properties to come back.

“The loss of a residence in an uncontrolled wildfire is shocking and recovery is difficult, no matter the resources of the owners,” fellow Front St. resident Dennis Ingram wrote in testimony. “The only events that are more shocking are actions and inactions that prevent the prompt reconstruction.”

Deal said he would consider making more changes if the house was a new development, but rebuilding is different. He said he is open to minor changes, but he will not consider big changes like removing the pool because he has already waited too long.

“This could be months of iteration with a very subjective view that I’m continuing to put resources to, and it’s draining my capacity,” Deal said. 

“We or I”

Lahaina resident Kelli Keahi testified against the permit approval. She’s had to rebuild her home twice and has complied with the county rules each time. After the 2023 Lahaina fires, she downsized her original home from a 5-bedroom 4-bath to a 3-bedroom 3-bath. 

She’s frustrated, because it seems others aren’t being held to the same rules.

“So please, as we rebuild Lahaina, rebuild smart,” Keahi said. “If I’m held to a certain standard, why is nobody else being held to the same standard that I was.” 

Keahi also said she’s seeing more mega-mansions spring up along the shoreline and is concerned with property taxes going up that will continue to price out locals. One in four Native Hawaiians have moved away and West Maui homes already sell for 21 times the amount a typical kama’aina households earn in a year.

Planning Commission member Ashley Lindsey said Lahaina is the type of community where people make adjustments to protect the environment, their neighbors and their future generations.

It’s a culture that prioritizes the “we” instead of the ,“I”, Lindsey said, but in Deal’s testimonies she only heard him talking about the “I.”

When pressed to answer how this house would benefit the community and focus on the “we,” the architect Kasprzycki said they’ve done their best to follow the building rules and he doesn’t know how else to answer the question.

“I know there’s a lot of emotions around it,” Kasprzycki said, “and I don’t want to say something to make you feel better about it.” 

Hawaiian cultural advisor ‘Uilani Kapu said any development or anything being rebuilt in Lahaina town needs to go through Aha Moku, according to section 2.3.16 in the West Maui community plan. This is so native cultural practitioners who understand the island’s ecology can assess environmental impacts. 

Kapu said she didn’t hear anything about the Front St. property.

While the Deal application includes a request letter sent to Aha Moku in August 2024, Kapu said she did not receive it. When the Planning Commission asked the Deals if they followed up on the letter to get a response, the consultant Ng said they did not. 

The Planning Commission deferred the decision so the Deals can meet with Aha Moku.