Drive through the entrance to Mauna Lani, past the roundabout that sends you toward the Auberge Collection or the Fairmont Orchid, and you pass a low, open-air shopping center that has looked the same for as long as most residents can remember: a busy Tommy Bahama patio, a packed Foodland Farms parking lot, and a stretch of storefronts with paper in the windows. For close to a decade, that has been the split personality of The Shops at Mauna Lani. Two anchors doing fine business. Everything around them sitting dark.
The easy explanation is that the location doesn't support more retail, that resort guests and Kohala Coast residents just don't shop there enough to fill 75,000 square feet. The actual explanation, which became public this spring, has nothing to do with demand. It has to do with who owned the building.
The Owner Was the Problem, Not the Location
The center's prior owner was indicted and later sentenced in connection with a scheme to manipulate WeWork stock, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Once that case broke, the property fell into a court-appointed receivership, where the priority isn't growth or curation, it's keeping the lights on and the mortgage current until a sale can happen. That is what a receiver does, and for about ten years, that is all The Shops at Mauna Lani got.
Doug Wood, the CEO of Tommy Bahama and the center's anchor tenant since it opened in 2005, put it plainly to Big Island Now in March: he calls it a "failed center for the last 10 years" with a vacancy rate near 50 percent. But Wood also said something that undercuts the demand theory entirely. His own restaurant and retail store never struggled. He extended his lease for at least 10 years, with an option for 20, while the building sat in receivership. If the location were the issue, the one business that could freely walk away wouldn't have doubled down.
That distinction matters if you live here. A shopping center with a demand problem doesn't get better on its own. A shopping center with an ownership problem does, the moment ownership changes.
What Changed in March
Ownership changed in March 2026. Los Angeles-based BH Properties acquired the six-acre center, with the ground lease and fee-simple interest reportedly trading in a combined deal valued around $26 million, and immediately brought in CBRE to run leasing and repositioning. Jim Brooks, president of BH Properties, described the appeal in a company statement: the center's fundamentals are strong and its leasing potential has gone largely untapped.
Here's the shift in plain terms.
| Under receivership (roughly 2016–2026) | Under BH Properties (2026 forward) | |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership | Court-appointed receiver, following the prior owner's federal stock fraud case | BH Properties, Los Angeles |
| Vacancy | Near 50 percent, about 11 empty storefronts | Active leasing campaign underway |
| Leasing goal | Stabilize the asset, nothing more | Chef-driven restaurants, lifestyle retail, boutique fitness and wellness |
| Anchor commitment | Uncertain, month to month in practice | Tommy Bahama re-signed for 10 to 20 years |
CBRE's leasing team, which includes Kelly Graf, Connor Patterson, Kenny Brooks, Wendell Brooks and Kimo Greenwell, has also flagged capital improvements to the common areas: new landscaping, better lighting, and a redesign aimed at making the center a place families linger rather than pass through. Graf noted the plan capitalizes on something the center already has going for it, a pedestrian and bike-friendly connection to the Mauna Lani resort just three-tenths of a mile away. Wood, for his part, thinks even something as simple as a Starbucks would move the needle on foot traffic.
None of this is guesswork about the future. It's the stated plan from the people who now hold the lease documents, reported through Big Island Now's March interview with Wood and Graf, and confirmed in CBRE's own announcement of the acquisition.
What's Already Worth the Stop
You don't have to wait for the reimagined center to get something out of it this month. The current roster already covers a full day:
- Foodland Farms for groceries, prepared meals, and the kind of local beef and fish selection that makes a beach picnic easy to assemble
- Tommy Bahama Restaurant & Bar, the center's anchor since 2005, still doing the volume that kept its lease alive through the lean years
- Island Hopper Taproom, pouring a rotating list of roughly 75 beers and ciders that leans hard into Hawaii breweries, Big Island Brewhaus, Ola Brew, Kona Brewing Co., with Kohola Brewery slated to join the taps soon
- Mauna Lani Coffee Company, open early for a coffee or smoothie before a walk
- Hawaiian Island Creations, Juice 101, and Knead & Bake rounding out the current local mix
The one thing missing from that list right now is variety in dining beyond what's already there. CBRE's stated target, chef-driven restaurants and boutique fitness concepts, is aimed directly at that gap. Until new leases are signed, though, the existing tenants are the ones carrying the center's daily traffic, exactly as they have for years.
The Rhythm of a Mauna Lani Week
The retail vacancy story and the daily-life story are two different things, and the second one has been working fine the whole time.
Twice a month, on the second and fourth Wednesday, the center's main stage hosts Mauna Lani Sunset Jams from 5 to 7 p.m., a free community event with live local music, a beer garden run by Island Hopper Taproom, and rotating vendors. Island Hopper also runs its own live music nights on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 5:30 to 6:30, and the center layers in hula shows on Monday and Thursday nights to draw people out after the shops themselves have closed for the day. If you want something later, Kozy's Tiki Palace runs comedy and magic shows nightly.
Pair that evening rhythm with a morning one. A short drive or a walk from the shops, the Kalahuipua'a Historic Park runs a mile of paved trail through the resort's preserved lava tube, petroglyphs, and a set of ancient Hawaiian fishponds, Kalahuipua'a among them, that still hold living fish today at 4.6 acres and roughly 18 feet deep. Ancient Hawaiians lived and fished this same ground for nearly 800 years before Western contact. The trailhead sits off Pauoa Road, a few minutes from the shopping center itself, and the loop takes most people 30 to 60 minutes at an easy pace. It's the kind of walk you can do before the shops open and still make it back for a coffee.
That's the actual week available to someone living here right now: a trail through centuries of Hawaiian history in the morning, a beer garden and live band on a Wednesday evening, and a shopping center in the middle that is finally being run by someone with a plan instead of a receiver's mandate to just hold steady.
What to Watch For
The center's location was never the question. It sits at the gate to Mauna Lani, Auberge Collection, and the Fairmont Orchid, a mile off Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway, the road that carries the bulk of Kohala Coast traffic. The question was always whether the owner running it had the ability or the incentive to lease it out fully. For a decade, the answer was no, not because of who was shopping there, but because of who was in receivership court.
That answer changed in March. Whether the next round of tenants shows up as fast as CBRE hopes is still an open question, and residents who've watched storefronts sit empty for years have earned the right to wait and see before celebrating. But the mechanism that kept those spaces dark has been removed, which is a very different situation than the one this center has been stuck in for the better part of a decade.
If you're weighing what a shift like this means for property values or timing around a move in Mauna Lani, that's a conversation worth having directly. Lovette Llantos tracks these changes across the Kohala Coast as they happen, not after the fact. Get Your Free Home Valuation to see where your property stands as this corner of the neighborhood turns a page.
