On one hand, Ellison’s wealth means he can invest more in the community than Murdock did. He’s renovated the pool and the movie theater, and he kept much of the island on payroll for months during the pandemic. On the other hand, his control has steadily tightened. Since the purchase, he’s bought up dozens more homes and businesses, including the island’s main grocery store and its lone gas station, community newspaper, and non-Four Seasons hotel. Ellison’s development plans tend to be secretive. Most locals have only heard that he intends to make the island “sustainable”, with little explanation of what that might mean.
Most of the more than 30 Lanai residents interviewed for this story say that because there are no real alternatives to Ellison’s control, his decisions carry the force of law, with a minimum of discussion and hardly any due process. Lanai’s small businesses are sputtering, and even by US standards, the island’s housing shortage is extreme. There’s only one home for sale as of early June: a beachfront estate for $7.9 million. The median household income is $59,000, but it appears to be climbing as richer residents move in. Locals whose families have lived on the island for generations, often sharing homes with parents and grandparents, are leaving as Ellison’s construction workers and Four Seasons employees fill practically every available bed.
Sophie Alexander
A fine example of extreme income inequality and how it can distort society away from democracy and back towards a feudal-like system. An immensely wealthy lord and his ‘noble’ guests and peers having near-absolute control over his estate, while the people living there must comply with his rules, or face eviction, unemployment, and eventually leaving the island. The American system is weirdly geared towards this outdated organization, with health insurance dependent on the employer and their fascination of celebrities and mega-corporations, some going as far as imagining a world where corporations replace the government as providers of basic services, everything from health insurance to transportation and housing. Apparently, they never stopped to wonder what would happen to those services when employees get laid off, as it is frequently happening during economic depressions.
Tom Cruise’s visit, shortly after Ellison bought the island, still comes up a lot. Eight residents, including de Jetley and Palumbo, recounted the story of when Cruise visited as a guest of Ellison’s son, David, whose production company, Skydance Media, produced the current blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick, as well as other films starring the actor. They say Cruise flipped and totaled one of Ellison’s cars while driving on some of Lanai’s mostly unpaved roads. (Calls and emails to Cruise’s and David Ellison’s representatives, including to a spokesperson for Skydance, weren’t returned.) A person who saw the destroyed car, a Toyota Land Cruiser, and who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, says Pulama employees were called to clean up and recycle the wreckage. This person says there are no police records of the incident because it occurred on private land, no one was reported injured, and Ellison owned the tow truck. Until now, it never appeared in the press. One former Four Seasons employee on Lanai, who asked not to be named because of an NDA, says they were once suspended from their job merely for mentioning that Cruise was ever on the island. The Four Seasons declined to comment.
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