Walk the Kaanapali Beach Walk from the Sheraton down toward the Hyatt Regency this week and you'll notice something that doesn't quite add up. Near Puʻu Kekaʻa, the outcropping most people call Black Rock, the sand still runs wide and the path holds its line the way it always has. Keep walking south past Hanakaʻōʻō Point and the beach visibly narrows, and the walkway itself shows the scars from a March storm that chewed into the pavement near the Hyatt. Same three-mile stretch of Hawaii's original planned resort. Two very different beaches.
That split isn't an illusion and it isn't random. It's the reason a long-stalled restoration plan just came back from the dead, and it's also the reason residents should be careful about what they expect to see happen and when.
Two Beaches, One Resort
Kaanapali Beach Resort covers roughly 1,200 acres of West Maui shoreline and, according to the resort association, generates an estimated $3 billion a year in gross revenue for the state. It has also been eroding for four decades, and not evenly. Engineers divide the beach into two littoral cells, and each one behaves differently.
Between Hanakaʻōʻō Beach Park and Hanakaʻōʻō Point, the sand has thinned steadily and predictably. That's the stretch fronting the Hyatt end, where the restoration plan calls for placing about 50,000 cubic yards of sand to widen the dry beach by 41 to 78 feet, closer to what it measured back in 1988. Between Hanakaʻōʻō Point and Puʻu Kekaʻa, the sand shifts seasonally rather than disappearing outright, which is part of why the Sheraton and Black Rock end still reads as healthier to the eye. There, the plan calls for a smaller intervention: about 25,000 cubic yards to raise the beach berm by 3.5 feet, along with new protodunes and native dune vegetation meant to hold sand in place rather than let it wash back out.
If you live or stay near Black Rock, the beach in front of you probably still looks close to what you remember. If you're near the Hyatt, you've likely already seen the difference, storm damage included.
The Plan That Died in 2023, and Why This Attempt Is Built Differently
This isn't a new idea. Kaanapali Beach Resort first retained the coastal engineering firm Sea Engineering back in 2006 to study restoration options, and a final environmental impact statement for a nourishment project was accepted in 2021. Then, in 2023, the state withdrew its share of the funding and the project stalled. The version that failed was a public-private effort that depended on state money and drew sharp criticism over sand mining, reef impacts, and whether public dollars should shore up private oceanfront property.
The version now working its way through permitting is structurally different in the one way that matters most: it's fully privately funded by the resort's own property owners, filed jointly by the Pilikahakai Foundation, a nonprofit established in 2024 by Kaanapali Beach Resort owners, and the Kaʻanapali Operations Association. In July 2026 the two groups submitted a Conservation District Use Application to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands, the first formal step in what officials describe as a multi-year county, state, and federal review.
The plan has also changed on the merits since 2023. Project supporters point to a 20 percent reduction in the total sand volume, an expanded protective buffer around Puʻu Kekaʻa that grew from 150 feet to 280 feet, the removal of construction staging from Hanakaʻōʻō Beach Park, in-water work scheduled outside canoe paddling season, and a full-time cultural monitor with authority to halt work if needed.
"We have over 30 years of scientific studies documenting how this shoreline is changing," said Chris Conger, the Sea Engineering consultant serving as the project's public face, in comments to Hawaii News Now. "More wave energy is reaching the shoreline, accelerating erosion while disrupting the natural processes that keep beaches healthy."
That history explains why the current filing carries more weight than a press release. It also explains why nobody, including the project's own backers, is promising a fast outcome. The application still needs a Special Management Area permit and a public hearing before the Maui Planning Commission on top of the conservation district review, and community opposition hasn't gone away. Longtime critic Kai Nishiki has argued publicly that the only durable answer is managed retreat, relocating infrastructure away from the shoreline rather than continually trucking sand back in, and has questioned whether this project functions as a genuine bridge to that outcome or simply delays it.
If approved on the current timeline, construction would begin in fall 2027 and take two to three months. The state's own project documents specify the work would run at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week, timed for October through December to avoid overlapping with both the southern summer swell and the northern winter swell.
The Lifeguard Tower Is a Separate, Smaller Fight
Buried inside the same announcement is a second commitment that has nothing to do with sand permits or conservation district review. Pilikahakai Foundation has pledged up to $150,000 to help build and equip a new Maui County lifeguard tower on the north end of Kaanapali Beach, where the nearest existing stand currently sits about 1.5 miles away at Hanakaʻōʻō Beach Park. The tower is being developed directly with Maui County Ocean Safety rather than through the DLNR permitting track that governs the beach nourishment itself.
This gap matters because the area near Black Rock has had a lifeguard problem for a lot longer than it's had a sand problem. County officials have discussed a tower at that location for nearly a decade because of the high number of drownings clustered there, and the statewide numbers explain why. Maui County recorded 221 ocean drownings between 2013 and 2022, with about 70 percent involving visitors, and state health officials have identified Kaanapali and Wailea as the two resort-area hot spots. Between 2020 and 2024, Maui logged 97 ocean drownings compared to 183 on Oahu, a lower raw count that still works out to more than double Oahu's drowning rate once population is factored in. Neither Kaanapali nor Wailea currently has a single lifeguard tower, a gap officials attribute to the patchwork of private, state, and county land ownership along those shorelines.
Because the tower funding and county coordination don't depend on the same conservation district approval, environmental review, or Planning Commission hearing that the sand project needs, there's a real chance it could move on a faster clock. Nothing has been formally scheduled as of this writing, but it's the piece of this story least tangled up in permitting and pushback.
What Actually Changes for Residents Between Now and 2027
Here's the plain version. If you live at Kaanapali, the beach in front of your building will look the same through the rest of 2026 and very likely through 2027. The conservation district application is still under state review, no approval has been reported, and no construction date has been set. Even in the best case for the project's backers, sand doesn't move until fall 2027 at the earliest, and the fight over managed retreat versus nourishment isn't settled.
The lifeguard tower is the one variable that could show up sooner, precisely because it isn't waiting on the same regulatory chain. If a stand appears near Black Rock before the sand does, that will be the tell that the funding and county coordination came together faster than the environmental permitting process ever could.
In the meantime, the practical takeaway for anyone walking that stretch daily is to notice which end you're on. The Sheraton and Black Rock side is holding. The Hyatt side is the one carrying both the storm damage and the bulk of the proposed fix. Two beaches, one resort, and only one of the two problems on the table right now has anything resembling a near-term answer.
If you want to track the permitting record yourself, the state Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands maintains the project files for Kaʻanapali, and Pilikahakai Foundation posts updates directly at pilikahakai.org.
If you're watching Kaanapali for reasons beyond the next beach walk, whether that's a property you already own here or a future move to West Maui, the Marchello Team has spent decades tracking exactly this kind of on-the-ground change along this coastline. Reach out anytime you want a straight answer about what's really happening in your corner of Kaanapali.