It’s playing for the mere millionaires being humiliated by billionaires in paradise.
By Robert Kolker | Bloomberg Businessweek
Once upon a time, thousands of years ago, a surging mass of magma beneath the Pacific Ocean burst through the earth’s crust and began burping out a stream of lava, first underwater, then above, to form land. As the tectonic plate shifted, the eruption created a string of four islands—all of which are pretty nice, but the largest, known today as Hawaii’s Big Island, is as close to paradise as any human might deserve. On the beaches, the temperature hardly ever roams above the mid-80s F or below 70. It’s the tropics, yet it’s seldom muggy. And rain, when it comes, is like an afterthought—the gentlest of reminders of how achingly wonderful the island is the rest of the time.
But even in paradise, some spots are better than others. The island’s northwest shore is a gold coast made remote and exclusive by a border of long, flat fields of volcanic rock. Laurance Rockefeller opened the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel there in 1965. Then came the Hapuna, the Mauna Lani, the Orchid, and the Waikoloa. In his final years, Steve Jobs often hid out in Kona Village, a rustic, low-fi, Bali Ha’i-style hideaway best reached by private plane. Nearby is Kukio, a quiet homeowners’ community where KKR’s Paul Hazen, Sutter Hill Ventures’ David Anderson, and Silver Lake Partners’ David Roux became neighbors. And last to be built, nestled between Kukio and Kona Village, came the place that in many ways would outclass them all.
