Listening To The Land
Mitch D’Olier of Kaneohe Ranch is sprucing up Kailua town, not always to the liking of some residents, but he says he follows one guiding principle: Listen to the land
By Chad Pata
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came up with the Thursday night concept, housed in the new parking structure to prevent rainouts and add to the utility of the building.
“I figured we could use the amenity, bring together farmers and local residents and get people to stay downtown at night,” says D’Olier, who claims there were 3,000 people on the first night and that they are still drawing more than 1,500 every week.
“It brought the community together. A lot of social capital develops from people being together in places, and there are all kinds of people I see every Thursday in the farmers market who I might not otherwsieever see.”
Kaneohe Ranch has been part of this community dating back to 1893, when it actually was a ranch, and has evolved as the Windward side has, changing from farming to land holding as the Wilson Tunnel and Pali Highway brought a new population to Kailua. Through the changes, it has maintained certain philosophies that are readily evident when you walk around the new Kailua Town Center.
First is a commitment to art. Throughout the center you will find murals, fountains and mosaics that are required by the very tenets of the company. As a nod to Harold Castle’s affinity for dogs, there is even a dog water fountain street-side of the Whole Foods building.
One also will notice the oversized, shaded sidewalks, meant to entice people to get out of their cars. For D’Olier, a big part of keeping the small town feel is having pedestrians rather than drivers.
“Now my job is how to bring these businesses in and keep the character of a small place, and that is the fun of my job - things like public art, dog fountains and the Hamakua Nature Walk,” he says.
But it is not all fun. The other controversy D’Olier has been battling has been the Target store. Opponents have even gone so far as to create a website to post concerns over jobs being taken, small businesses being run out of town and traffic bringing the city to a screeching halt.
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The uproar leaves D’Olier scratching his head a bit. For starters, Kaneohe Ranch didn’t recruit Target. Target actually came and purchased the lease from Don Quijote all on its own. Secondly, it is simply replacing one big super store with a newer, nicer super store.
“With Target, it seemed to be Big Box hatred, though the box isn’t much bigger than Holiday Mart was before,” says D’Olier. “I was surprised by the vehemence of the Target thing. Some of it was corporate hate, and some of it was hatred of national brand names.
“Even though we already had a Macy’s and a Longs and a Starbucks, they didn’t want any national names and just as soon preferred I took all the national names out and started all over again. So our question was: What works? Should we be in retail at all or should it be all offices?”
Now that the traffic fears have been allayed, construction has begun with the store due to open in July of next year. As a show of its commitment to the community, Target Foundation rebuilt the library at Blanche Pope Elementary School from the ground up. New white smart boards were installed, new computers sit atop the desks and 2,000 new volumes of books were brought in.
“They are trying to create a love of reading with all children,” says D’Olier, who moved here from the south side of Chicago. “Literacy is something that Target is all about nationally. They told me they were community guys, but I never thought anything like that would come about that fast.”
D’Olier also likes to point out that Target was going to be built somewhere on the Windward side and people are going to shop there regardless. Keeping it in Kailua will bring more dollars to the town and to the peripheral shops around it.
Despite all the criticisms he has had to endure in the job, D’Olier still looks at it as the best thing that could have happened for him.
“I was asked to take the job as president of Kaneohe Ranch at the same time as I was asked to take the job as president of the Harold Castle Foundation,” says D’Olier.
“The combination of the two - the chance to really try to give back to the community and make the philanthropy more effective to the benefit of all of Hawaii’s people and to build assets for this place - that was an opportunity unlike any I had ever seen, and it has turned out to be as rewarding as I thought it would be.”
D’Olier met his wife Bambi while in school at the University of Iowa. After graduating they came to visit Oahu and he immediately fell in love with the Islands. Bambi agreed to move out here for one year - 40 years ago. A lawyer by trade, he worked in processing transactions between companies for 19 years, making him the natural choice when Hawaiian Airlines needed a new man to help them out of the financial wilderness.
This led him to Victoria Ward where he spent nine years before joining Kaneohe Ranch in 2002.
While the company does keep him busy, recreational diving is the family hobby, though the new grandkids have made Disneyland much more of a destination than the Great Barrier Reef for the foreseeable future.
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