LAHAINA — With its ground floor space rented out and a new lender, 505 Front Street is looking to the future by looking to the past.

J.J. Elkin, who purchased the troubled center for his three children 14 years ago, watched it from afar (Bermuda) for years, until, about five years ago, he concluded that it needed his direct oversight.

“It was not going uphill,” he said.

So he moved to Maui, where he and his daughter Danielle now run the retail-commercial complex.

The center’s fundamental problem has been obvious for a long time — tourists do not walk south of the Lahaina Banyan Tree. Elkin, a Canadian, says anywhere else in the world (and especially Bermuda, which limits autos to one per house) this would not be a problem. But Americans won’t walk.

Surveying his options, he says he decided his property had two great advantages, “one that I knew about and one that I didn’t know about.”

The obvious advantage was his location on the beach.

Not visible at all under weeds and ball fields across Front Street is Moku‘ula, the residence of kings when Lahaina was the capital. Someday, the Friends of Moku‘ula expects to have a cultural center across the road, and that, Elkin is sure, will be the attractor that 505 Front Street needs to become a vibrant daytime shopping center.

For now, Elkin finds his business focus at night, with four restaurants covering the oceanfront — Pacific ‘O, IO, the Feast at Lele and Hecock’s.

The first three are under the direction of executive chef James McDonald, who started with partners as Pacific ‘O in a location where three ambitious restaurants had already failed.

Pacific ‘O succeeded, and the partners crossed the walkway to start IO, then took over the food service for an upscale luau show, with the entertainment provided by Old Lahaina Lu‘au, which moved out of 505 with its less expensive luau show to a new location in Lahaina.

A few years ago, “there were a lot of pukas” in the leasable space, but all of the ground floor is now occupied, except for one space, which Elkin says is close to being filled.

The second floor, intended as office space, is still largely empty, though it includes the offices of Friends of Moku‘ula, a hair salon and a few other tenants.

“I am very happy to say that it has now been turned around,” says Elkin of the center, which was designed with something of the look of a New England fishing village. It was developed in conjunction with Lahaina Shores next door, but when the project got into financial trouble the properties were severed.

The center was in bankruptcy when Elkin took control.

As of Tuesday, Elkin has a new lender, Central Pacific Bank.

When he first took control of the property, he had placed a mortgage with GE Capital, which was renewed twice. Last August, he says, although he had “never been a day late” with a payment, GE told him it was winding up the loan and made arrangements to foreclose and auction off the property if Elkin could not pay it off by October.

He didn’t have the money — $8.2 million — or enough time to meet that deadline through refinancing, and he was upset by news reports that the center was to be sold on the courthouse steps.

In October, he said he was confident he could refinance and that the reports were just creating unnecessary anxiety.

Elkin, a Harvard Business School graduate who made his money with the Fidelity investment group, says he understood that GE wanted to redeploy its capital. But it took more than a few months to obtain an appraisal and complete other tasks to get refinancing.

He says he is pleased now to be with a local lender that is committed to the long term, as he is.

In the long run, he sees 505’s success tied closely to Moku‘ula, Kamehamehaiki Park next door and the Hawaiian cultural renaissance. The Elkins have begun supporting the host culture in different ways.

Public art on display at the center has been replaced with Polynesian canoes, the first, the Taniera, carved by a Cook Islander that Elkin met at the annual Lahaina Festival of Canoes.

Danielle Elkin and Akoni Akana, the executive director of Friends of Moku‘ula, have formed a business, Maui Nei, to provide walking tours of Lahaina’s cultural heritage.

To Elkin, making the authentic Hawaiian culture available to visitors is essential, because, despite Maui’s beauty, beaches and weather, “you can get that elsewhere cheaper.”

The culture, though, is a unique draw.

As for the business side, he has lost and gained some tenants and is pleased to have had some grow on the spot from very small beginnings.

Dolphine David and Ruth Ann Wilson started The Needlework Shop in a corner of the second floor of Joanne Carroll’s Old Lahaina Book Emporium, which has recently moved back to what old-timers may recall as Alex’s Hole-in-the-Wall, where it operated before moving to 505.

David and Wilson have just opened a much larger shop on the ground floor, where they offer free, one-on-one instruction in making Hawaiian quilts. Last year, they had 120 students.

Lahaina Printsellers is just settling in, as is Gallerie Hawaii. 

Other tenants range from Lei Spa, the longest-established, to Goofy Foot, a surf school.

With the exception of Whalers General Store, the tenants are locally owned and mostly operated by the owners.

That provides the kind of hands-on attention that Elkin has found it necessary in his own role, and he considers that the local focus will be a source of long-term strength for the property.

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