Hunting for (free) parking in Kaanapali | News, Sports, Jobs

Free public beach access parking is available in Kaanapali, but finding it is like being on a hunting expedition.

On Friday morning, during a Maui News inspection of available resort parking, drivers circled like sharks waiting for a rare open stall in lots on the busy north end in the vicinity of Black Rock, Whalers Village and the Sheraton and Westin resorts.

Later the same morning, open stalls were available at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa and the Marriott Ocean Club.

The reason is supply and demand, but without much help from sometimes unclear signage placed by hotels and resorts.

Overall, according to a survey by the county Department of Planning, there are 196 public beach access stalls available in the Kaanapali Resort area off of Kaanapali Parkway and Nohea Kai Drive.

(The amount required by county special management area permits – some dating back to the late 1970s and ’80s – is 192, according to the Planning Department. But Whalers Village, 21 available stalls, and the Kaanapali Alii, 11 stalls, each provide one more stall than required by the county, and the Hyatt, 74 stalls, provides two extra.)

Two resorts on the Lahaina end – the Hyatt and the Marriott Maui Ocean Club with 30 stalls – together account for 104, or 53 percent, of the available free beach parking.

On the north end, the Sheraton Maui Resort & Spa has 20 spaces in the basement of a parking garage just off of Kaanapali Parkway, and next door, the Ka’anapali Beach Hotel has 10 parking spaces, but they are up against a chain-link fence, next to the beach access walkway, and a sign directing beachgoers there says: “VALET PARKING ONLY” in large red letters, followed by an arrow pointing to the right and smaller words saying, “BEACH PARKING IN DESIGNATED STALLS ONLY!”

Around 9 a.m. Friday, the Sheraton and KBH public parking lots were full except for an open stall each. The single remaining Sheraton space left a narrow challenge, but 28-year-old Canadian resident Troy Iwaskow was able to squeeze in and then corkscrew himself out of the driver’s side door.

He and three others had been staying at the Papakea Resort for five days, and said parking at Kaanapali had been “difficult,” but not impossible. At times, Iwaskow and his friends paid for parking, he said.

At the KBH lot, Caroline Tran, 27, of Los Angeles and her friend, Ken, took the last space. She said the online site Yelp had directed her to the free parking in the area, and they had gone “two rounds” of different lots before finding the open space.

But Tran seemed unfazed. Parking in Los Angeles is worse, she said.

Farther south, the lot between the Westin Maui Resort & Spa, which has 30 beach parking stalls, and the Whalers Village was busy with large truck deliveries of soda and ice cream, adding to the traffic of motorists looking for available stalls. In one instance, there was an open handicapped beach access stall. A young, 20-something woman parked there, put a disabled placard on the rear-view mirror and ambled toward the beach carrying a container with cups of drinks.

Still farther south, a hunt for parking stalls provided by the Maui Ocean Club turned up a lot behind a foliage screen. The first sign seen upon entering the lot read “VALET PARKING ONLY” in large red letters with an arrow pointing left. However, after entering the nearly empty lot, there was line of available stalls. Each had a sign above saying it was “Maui Ocean Club PRIVATE PROPERTY” and below that read “Beach Access” and a blue arrow pointing right. On the pavement in front of each stall, in what appeared to be relatively fresh paint, read “BEACH PARKING ONLY” followed by a number.

Following up on a complaint from West Maui community activist Randy Draper, Department of Planning Deputy Director Michele Chouteau McLean researched the beach parking pledges made by each resort and conducted site inspections to ensure compliance.

The Maui Ocean Club’s compliance had been the biggest question mark, and in a March 2 letter, McLean told the resort’s management that the Planning Department could confirm only 10 public beach access stalls.

On Thursday, Marriott General Manager Bill Countryman told The Maui News the hotel had complied with its parking requirements.

“We have 30 stalls,” he said. “We’re in compliance. They’re on the resort.”

On Friday, McLean said she had met with Countryman on Thursday and found all 30 required stalls.

She said she had not seen them during an inspection in February, and she said the ocean club apparently had the beach parking stalls in its parking garage where there had been some conflicts with resident parking. McLean said the resort moved the stalls outside to where valet parking had been.

The parking requirements come from special management area permits granted to the Kaanapali hotels and resorts when developers made pledges to provide parking for beach access – not for employees, not for guests, not for vendors – but for the public. The resorts needed to provide separate parking for guests and employees.

Following complaints by Draper, the Planning Department unearthed files from banker’s boxes stored at Island Movers in Kahului, McLean said. The process of finding the records and deciphering each resort’s parking requirements took about a year.

Now, after some doubts about the Maui Ocean Club and the Westin (which had earlier been counted two short of its required 30 stalls), an inspection on Thursday found all the Kaanapali properties were in compliance with parking requirements, McLean said Friday.

“All the properties we looked at are compliant,” she said, adding that she would write follow-up letters to property managers, thanking them and adding that it would be helpful to provide signs for beach parking and to request managers to strive to monitor public parking to ensure that it’s not taken by employees or vendors.

McLean credited Draper for being persistent in complaining about lax enforcement of beach parking requirements and about stalls not available all day and night, as required.

“I’ve been trying to get the county to enforce the special management area agreements, which they never did until recently,” Draper said last week.

Before Draper’s complaints, enforcement of beach parking requirements had been on a case-by-case basis, with some complaints about employees parking in public-access stalls and asking hotel managers to follow up, she said.

“There was never a coordinated effort until Randy’s persistence made its way to me,” McLean said. “And I realized we should look at the resort area as a whole.”

McLean had the records exhumed and followed up with personal site inspections, including some with Draper.

They agreed that when hotel and resort staff knew a county inspection was coming, the parking areas were “spiffed up.”

“We knew that if the county was looking, they’d take it seriously,” she said.

McLean said she had made it clear to property managers that the county’s enforcement is not a one-time deal that would allow them to go back to business as usual.

“We do enforcement. We know it’s hard,” she said, especially when it’s unclear whether someone parked in a beach stall belongs there or not.

But, “we ask that they make their best effort to tell employees not to park in any resort beach parking,” she said.

McLean said follow-up checks would be quarterly, at least, or more if there are complaints.

Draper said the core of the problem is enforcement – keeping beach parking for the public. “Half of those stalls are taken up by 9 o’clock by vendors,” he said.

Without enforcement by the county, “the hotels did what they wanted (with parking) because nobody really cared,” he said.

Draper said island young people love the ocean and will go to the beach if there’s open parking.

“If there’s a place to park, they’ll use it,” he said.

* Brian Perry can be reached at bperry@mauinews.com.

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