As sunburned tourists cruise Lahaina's Front Street and buy relics celebrating the town's whaling history, Akoni Akana contemplates the adjacent dusty baseball field and parking lot and envisions a vastly different reality.

Beneath the grass and asphalt, Akana says, lies the ancient home of Maui's ruling chief, a sacred island and lake guarded by a mo'o goddess.

Akana is the executive director of the Friends of Moku'ula, a community group committed to restoring the 17-acre sacred island complex to its former glory. The project enjoys overwhelming support by the community, Lahaina businesses, Maui council and Mayor Ñ and $1 million in funding commitments.

But county and state agency delays in processing lease and grant documents have turned this field of dreams into a bureaucratic nightmare.

Eight months after the Maui County Council awarded a lease for the site to the group, documents for the lease and license to occupy remain unexecuted. Moreover, $425,000 in funding appropriated by the County Council in February has not been dispersed.

"It's troubling that there are these delays in this process," says Ryan Mielke, OHA Programs and Information Director. "We look forward to a speedy resolution so that this valuable project so important to the Hawaiian community can get under way."

OHA has provided $150,000 in community-based economic development grants to the restoration project, matching major funds provided by the Administration for Native Americans.

"Things are moving along," assures Roxanne Teshima, who manages grants for the Maui parks and recreation department. She explained that state and county lawyers were still reviewing the documents, but that all should be finalized by the fall. "We just need to be sure all the bases are covered before the ball rolls," Teshima says.

Maui council funds will lapse if work contracts are not encumbered before Dec. 31. The group has received proposals for design and planning, begun community entrepeneur training, and kicked off its capital campaign. But Akana fears current delays threaten participants' morale, as well as future funding support.

"So many people have worked so hard for so long," he says. "We've gone as far as we can without a lease and money in hand." Meanwhile, piles of rusting equipment, car batteries, and hypodermic needles litter the unkempt field and disrespect the ancient site.

Efforts to bring the wahipana back to life began 12 years ago when Akana, then a cultural resource advisor at the KŠ'anapali Hotel, researched the history of pre-contact Lahaina. He discovered that beneath the ballfield lay royal burials and a one-acre island surrounded by a 17-acre freshwater fishpond called Loko o Mokuhinia, said to be the home of a powerful lizard goddess named Kihawahine. A 1993 archaeological dig confirmed the location of the island complex.

Once the ruling center of the Hawaiian monarchy, Moku'ula was the royal sanctuary of the great 16th high chief Pi'ilani and Kamehameha royalty until 1845 when the capital was moved to Honolulu. In the late 1800s, the lake's water was diverted to sugar plantations, and by 1914, the lake had been filled in, and the land converted into a public park. Moku'ula's sacred significance was largely forgotten.

Today, the island submerged for so long is poised for its rebirth as a place where modern Hawaiians reconnect to their spiritual roots. After red tape hurdles are cleared, Akana says, the restoration process will offer opportunities for the community to get involved in archaeological research, Hawaiian cultural practices, traditional architecture, lo'i and fishpond restoration and more.

Amidst the commercial bustle of Lahaina's tourist enclave, the restored complex will be an oasis of living Hawaiian culture. "Some people go, 'Wow, going look way out of place,'" Akana smiles, "But I say, 'No, all the other stuff you see Ñ that's out of place. Moku'ula is the one thing that is in place, that belongs here.'"