Sea level rise, permitting and a push for restoration of a buried historic site and wetlands make it challenging. A two-story building with a basement built as a general store during the plantation era in 1916 is charred but still standing amid the rubble along the main thoroughfare running through Lahaina after last summer’s inferno. “It’s built like a fortress,” said Leil Koch, co-owner of the building at 744 Front St.
“Two-foot concrete, double-rebar thing. It made it through a fire in 1919 and so now it’s made it through two fires.” Koch is eager to rebuild the 25,000-foot historic building that on Aug.
8 was the home of Billabong surf shop, Na Hoku jewelry, Vintage European Posters, a store featuring the Morrison Hotel Gallery and drummer Mick Fleetwood’s popular restaurant and rooftop bar. Just down the road, the Furtado family wants to rebuild their six burned Front Street buildings, which President Biden walked past to shake hands with first responders during his August visit to Lahaina. Kaleo Schneider said some of the properties have been in her family since the early 1900s, when her great-grandparents Antonio Furtado, a Portuguese immigrant, and his wife Lucy Napela Kaukau bought their first building for a butcher shop.
But the mostly local owners of the prime real estate are waiting for direction from Maui County, which is wrestling with how to rebuild one of the world’s iconic public thoroughfares in a historic district boasting many century-old.