A little over 60 years ago, the visionary entrepreneur Laurance Rockefeller transformed a vast lava field above a captivating beach into a golf course resort, the first on the island of Hawai‘i. The airy, art-filled Mauna Kea Beach Hotel became an instant icon of midcentury modern design, while Robert Trent Jones Sr.’s beautiful seaside links, the staff’s warm Hawaiian hospitality and the clear, warm waters of sandy Kauna‘oa Beach cultivated generations of avid clientele.
That’s quite the legacy to live up to, as the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel’s Legacy Desk, which assist the needs of long-time guests, is well aware. Yet the resort’s newly completed nearly $240 million-plus renovation has pulled off a unique trick: modernizing existing new facilities and building new ones, while somehow making them seem like they were always there.
Memorable New Looks
The refreshed family pool looks as enticing as ever, for example, but it’s now at a uniform depth of 4 feet. When I toured the indoor-outdoor spa complex, which recently debuted next to the new ocean-view fitness center with adult-only infinity lap pool and sun deck, and gazed at two new lush gardens — one dappled with works of art that produces food for the resort’s restaurants, and the other a host for native plants, Hawaiian cultural programs and children’s activities — I struggled to remember what had been in each of those areas only months before. Whatever was forgettable before is now memorable.
Similarly, the 252 rooms and suites boast numerous updates that hotel aficionados might clock as new yet appreciate for how well they dovetail with the historic look and feel of the resort. The signature Mauna Kea orange hue appears in subtle touches, such as trim around new sets of glass-topped drawers. Refillable water bottles are de rigueur these days, but here the rooms include individual filtered water taps at new bar stations — no having to fill them from the bathroom sink or a down-the-hall dispenser.
Corner sofas with tables, rather than desks, provide a residential feel, as do the suites’ multiple seating clusters for gathering indoors and out. The return of the original design’s sliding louver doors also made me think of the song, “Everything Old Is New Again,” and a paraphrase: Here, everything new seems old again, in the sense that it all fits right in.
This kind of praise is music to the ears of designer Jackson Butler, who helped conceptualize the renovation in 2018 while with Looney & Associates, and then post-Covid brought to life key components via his own firm, MADE Brands. “The new spa, the new fitness center, the new lounge — all of it feels like it could have been there already, and also feels new and also feels timeless,” Butler said. “We took a lot of pride about being in the mindset of ‘How do we create something that feels original, but respects the history and feels like it can be there for a very long time?’ ”
New and Renewed Menus
The lounge Butler referred to is a speakeasy officially opening this summer, after hosting a sneak peek/after-party in June as part of the resort’s 60th anniversary gala celebrations. Called the Rock Room, the “Mad Men”-style speakeasy includes “a piano, karaoke, and lots of fun stuff,” according to Butler. It also honors the legacy of Laurance Rockefeller, including photos from the former Rock Room board room, which the new spa displaced. “This new space is really an honest tribute to his vision and who he was as a person,” Butler said.
Cooking With Gas and New Gusto
Executive Chef Peter Abarcar, Jr., said he’s excited about the speakeasy and its “super-swanky period bar,” which will serve old-fashioned Old Fashioneds and small plates such as oysters Rockefeller (a nod to the lounge’s namesake), escargots and sushi from Copper Bar, the open-air restaurant and lounge one level up with sunset hula nightly. And the renovation has brought exciting changes to the resort’s other dining outlets, too.
The beloved beachside Hau Tree restaurant, now with a greatly enlarged kitchen, is already bustling in its new evening incarnation as Hau Tree Cantina, serving a gourmet regional Mexican menu. “We’re literally cooking with gas now and (Chef de Cuisine) Miguel Soto is busting out his amazing Mexican coastal cuisine using local products,” Arbarcar said.
As befits a world-class spa, clients of the Spa at Mauna Kea may linger by the garden-lined spa vitality pool to enjoy lighter fare such as vegetable summer rolls, Buddha power bowls and Abarcar’s favorite, “skinny burger,” made with Wagyu beef. “I’m always starving after a massage,” he explained, “and this burger is tall and sleek and cute, a banger with house-made sesame buns and house-made pickles.” If you don’t have time for a spa treatment, no worries—the same menu is also available on the expansive sun deck by the adult-only infinity pool overlooking the ocean.
New Legacy of Sustainability
The 25,000-square-foot Ulu Garden now provides fresh herbs, Portuguese kale and Hawaiian canoe crops such as sweet potato, banana, coconut and ulu (breadfruit) to the enhanced Manta restaurant and other outlets, according to Abarcar, who worked with resort chefs to determine which crops to plant. He’s equally proud of the resort’s new composting service.
“A lot of other hotels and restaurants just throw their waste into bags and it ends up in landfill,” Abarcar noted. “Some of our compost will find our ways to the golf course and our gardens, to re-enrich the soil and kind of make it full circle.”
Other green initiatives are more visible, such as the more environmentally friendly grass on the championship golf course, updated by Robert Trent Jones Jr. (the son of the original designer), and the solar panel-topped structures that now provide shade in the parking lot (once fully completed, the photovoltaic panel project will generate up to 50% of the resort’s energy needs, significantly advancing Mauna Kea Beach Hotel’s long-term sustainability initiatives). The spa also recently completed an installation of solar panels on its roof, according to Butler.
An architect by training, Butler said he spent “a lot of time researching and understanding Rockefeller’s vision and the respect that he had for the land and its history” while working on his design proposal. The improvements in sustainability are also about “creating legacy,” he noted. “In his day, Rockefeller had to put in sewer, water, a power plant… the ingenuity mindset is still present. And now it’s about how do we continue to serve this building in the future.”
Travel and features writer Jeanne Cooper fell in love with Marin and the Bay Area as a graduate student at Stanford University. After 20 years as an editor and writer for the Washington Post, Boston Globe and San Francisco Chronicle, she began a freelance career that has taken her from the Austral Islands to Zimbabwe, with many visits to Hawaii in between. Her stories have appeared in numerous national and regional magazines, including Hemispheres, Sunset, San Francisco and Nob Hill Gazette, as well as Marin and Local Getaways. The author of several Frommer’s guidebooks, she now lives on the Big Island, where she’s active in animal rescue. She still enjoys exploring Northern California with her husband and friends.
