KAPALAWAI — It’s easy to imagine, when you look at the sturdy but neglected
Robinson family mansion here, of a time when the predominant sound was rocking
chairs on expansive lanais made of imported wood.
Or how on the other side
of the house, facing (but invisible from) Kaumuali’i Highway, about 50 years
ago a party was going on, with the men playing pool and the women gathered
around the rectangular-shaped Steinway piano.
Of a time not so long ago
when Makaweli Ranch employees came to a smaller house near the mansion to
collect their pay envelopes. It was cash in those envelopes, and the ranch
personnel were on a different pay schedule from the sugar plantation workers,
recalls Joseph Manini, Sr., a 47-year ranch cowboy who is now retired.
Of
how the workers on payday would take the left fork where the road splits in
order to avoid the watchful eye of the Robinson luna (manager) — likely Selwyn
or Aubrey Robinson.
Of times not long ago when the family home was social
central for the whole west side, if not the entire island or a big chunk of the
central Pacific.
But one also must remember that this is the intensely
private Robinson family. So unless you lived, worked here or were invited here,
you didn’t come here.
Indeed, what drew many of the 50 people to a tour
yesterday of the 160-acres between Makaweli and Waimea—the proposed site of a
resort development—is the fact that the family was opening up its makai lands,
if only for a morning, to public inspection.
There were curious tourists
along with many curious residents who joined the state Land Use Commission for
the tour of the historic property.
The commission—which left the field
trip to begin a two-day public hearing that was scheduled to conclude today—is
considering a petition to change the state designation of the property from
agriculture to urban to allow a 250-cabin resort, with the mansion and an
equally historic fishpond as focal points.
And there’s about 4,000 feet of
pristine, white sand beach likely to be of interest to visitors and residents
alike. Many of the proposed cabins would be 50 feet or less from the
shoreline.
But the home is likely to continue being the showcase, with
7,000 square feet of interior space. In the middle of the last century, the
place was likely to have been bustling with activity as out-of-town
guests—farmers and others—found what must have been luxurious accommodations
and classic plantation hospitality.
It’s easy to see how the home in its
heyday was even the envy of the ruling Hawaiian chiefs of those days.
A
huge, nine-foot-wide lanai wraps the exterior of the home (it’s even wider at
the front and back of the estate), with an equally generous wraparound lanai
overlooking the enclosed courtyard area in the center of the
mansion.
Termite damage to the all-wood home is surprisingly minimal.
Planner Scott Ezer of Helber Hastert and Fee, a consulting firm hired by the
project developer, said that’s probably the result of the sea salt the imported
wood absorbed on its trans-Pacific trip to Kaua’i.
The mansion, built in
1897 by Aubrey Robinson, has 17,000 square feet of living space, including the
expansive lanais and interior courtyard.
Various generations of the
Robinson family lived in the home from the time it was built until the late
1980s, when Eleanor Robinson had the huge house largely to herself.
Her
will provides for an open-space view corridor from the front porch to the ocean
in perpetuity, something with which developer Lew Geyser of Destination
Villages Kaua’i says he will gladly comply.
After much debate, it was
decided to leave the mansion, a nearby guest house and about a dozen other
buildings in the compound intact, though the dilapidated former carriage house
and garage won’t be so lucky.
A building for cultivating ferns, built
partially below ground to escape the Westside heat, is to be spared, Ezer told
the crowd during the tour.
And nearly 10 employee homes on the property —
some still occupied — will remain inhabited by the workers and their families
for as long as they desire, he added.
In something that has grown to be
expected from the island’s largest private landowner (51,000 acres on Kaua’i
and all 46,000 acres of Ni’ihau), the resort proposal faced some near-fatal
family opposition simply because it meant breaking from the generations-old
tradition of Sunday as a no-work day.
There was a time when Robinson family
employees could not even wash their cars on a Sunday. Several of the family
members still religiously honor the Sabbath as a true time of rest — their
only day off, making it important as a day of relaxation.
At least at the
mansion and developed property, that would change. A bar, two restaurants,
three swimming pools, sports courts on the beach and near the home, a sewage
treatment plant and other amenities would comprise a seven-day-a-week
operation.
The bar — like the meeting rooms, administrative offices and
museum to be located in the mansion — still may close Sundays, in deference to
family tradition.
The estimated price tag for restoring the main home alone
is $1 million, a figure thought too low by some among those touring the
property.
The parcel is “blessed,” Ezer said, with much mature landscaping
in place, including fruit-bearing trees. A back-to-nature theme is planned, as
the resort would not have paved vehicular roads crisscrossing it, he
continued.
It will remain, as it has nearly always been, a place where
walking will be encouraged as the main mode of transportation, Ezer
said.
When the family lived at Kapalawai full-time, they were
self-sufficient, with horses, cows, goats, pigs, gardens, fruit trees and other
items of sustenance.
Still today, employee break time is often heralded by
the consumption of juicy mango from the property.
Beside the main house,
the physical feature drawing much discussion is a fishpond that, depending on
who’s talking, dates back to 200 B.C. or around 1000 A.D.
The 6.5-acre
pond, which hasn’t been maintained but at least through 1953 was still a
working fishpond fed by three springs responsible for bringing 2 million
gallons of water a day to the pond, will be restored to working condition,
according to developers.
Near the mauka point of the fishpond, the family
built a pumphouse to suck water from the pond to irrigate nearby
acreage.
Archaeological surveys and other investigations put the age of the
fishpond at about 1,000 years. But Manini contends that when his ancestors
first arrived here 200 years before the birth of Christ, they immediately began
cultivating fish from the 900-foot-long, 300-foot-wide pond.
Everyone
agrees, though, that the fishpond is a great resource. There are not many like
it in the state. It is also the home to at least two endangered species of
native birds.
The pond is thought to be a natural depression that Hawaiians
further defined into the teardrop fishpond shape with the construction of rock
walls.
Near the pumphouse and one end of the fishpond is a try-pot, a huge
iron receptacle once used aboard whaling ships to hold whale oil. On dry land,
the family filled the pot with molasses, which the cows loved. This move also
gave the cows a healthy thirst, which they quenched at nearby drinking water
sources.
A rock pile near the western border of the property is believed by
archaeologists to be just that — a pile of stones big and small brought to
this site from an adjacent field cleared for agricultural purposes.
It
measures 150 feet in length by 80 feet wide, and is eight feet tall, with
several layers of alterations. Oral histories seem to confirm that the site is
simply a clearing pile from that adjacent field.
But some Native Hawaiians
feel the rock pile is a heiau, something Manini said his cowboy co-workers a
generation older than him confirmed to him while he was still working
there.
Another Native Hawaiians couldn’t say for sure if the area is
suspected to be a heiau, but she felt the presence of Hawaiian spirits while
walking toward the rock pile.
The same person said she is sure an area of
the property from the highway to the ocean marked on the highway side by a
once-ornate iron gate is a pathway for Hawaiian spirits to journey to the ocean
and their jumping-off place for entering the eternal other world after their
human death.
The pathway, called “leina” in Hawaiian, means “place to leap
from.”
The developer and his representatives dug 23 exploratory subsurface
trenches around the property, looking for signs of former human occupation on
the property, and discovered one set of human remains and other signs of life
before the Robinsons.
Regardless of what the formation might be, the
developer plans to leave it in an undisturbed state, with no other new
construction around it.
Final decisions on the project are expected from
the Land Use Commission and the Kaua’i County Planning Commission by some time
in October.
Staff writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at 245-3681
(ext. 224) or pcurtis@pulitzer.net
