LANAI CITY >> Even though visitor accommodations were suspended last year at the Four Seasons Resort Lanai, Lodge at Koele, and half of the Four Seasons Resort Lanai at Manele Bay was closed for renovations, the island’s unemployment rate dropped from 4.3 percent in December 2013 to 2.3 percent, the lowest in the state, last month, according to state Department of Labor statistics.

In explaining how the island’s hotel and development company employees have remained on the job despite the renovation work, Pulama Lana’i Chief Operating Officer Kurt Matsumoto said that Four Seasons managers had reassigned Koele resort workers to other duties, some of which include community service projects.

“They’re doing their best to keep them whole,” Matsumoto said of Four Seasons management and its approach to employees represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Matsumoto’s comments came as Maui County Council members were meeting in Lanai City, working on a revision of the Lanai Community Plan. One of the draft plan’s chapters, Chapter 6, focuses on the island’s economic development, which includes employment for island residents.

Lanai had been a pineapple plantation town until former island owner David Murdock of Castle & Cooke bought 98 percent of the island in 1985 and shifted the island’s economy toward tourism. The Lodge at Koele opened in 1990, and the Manele Bay Hotel followed a year later. The last pineapple harvest was in 1992. Billionaire Larry Ellison bought Lanai from Murdock and Castle & Cooke in June 2012, and launched a makeover of the Manele hotel more than a year later.

Renovation work has been completed on one half of the hotel, which has reopened to guests, and “now we’re shifting the renovation over to the other side of the hotel,” Matsumoto said Thursday.

At Koele, the resort hasn’t exactly shut down because the hotel is being used as a dormitory for construction workers doing renovation work at Manele, he said.

“We’re just suspending operations to the public,” he told The Maui News (http://is.gd/dFk1fX). “There are still people working at Koele. There’s people still taking care of the building, doing landscaping, doing housekeeping work.”

About 70 Koele employees have been reassigned elsewhere, he said.

“We’ve been working with the Four Seasons and the ILWU,” he said. “And, the Four Seasons has managed to absorb some of the workforce at Manele. So they’ve had open positions, and they’ve been able to fill those open positions with some people from Koele.”

Some Koele employees have been assigned to other Four Seasons resorts around the world, Matsumoto said

“So, it’s great experience, a great training opportunity, and they can bring knowledge back after they serve some time off-island,” he said. “And the rest of the people, what we’ve managed to do is put them in various parts of our (Pulama Lana’i) operation or put them into a position where they can do . . . let’s call it, paid volunteering time.”

Matsumoto said examples of that include about a dozen Koele employees working at Lanai Elementary and High School.

“They’re in various roles that the school has decided to assign to them,” he said. “Some are teachers’ aides. Some are working on building a school garden.”

And other employees have been doing conservation and preservation work on the island, he said.

All this is being done while the employees are paid what they would have earned if they remained at the resort, he said.

“It’s between the Four Seasons and the ILWU, so the wage rates are still intact,” he said. “The Four Seasons has even worked it out for the tipped positions where they can look at what their average earnings were, inclusive of their gratuities.”

Lanai businesswoman Gail Allen, a 15-year-resident who lives near the Koele golf course, said that keeping hotel employees working and earning paychecks has helped businesses in town.

Island residents patronize her jewelry and clothing stores, which as of last week included Dis ‘N Dat and Island Treasures, she said. The stores employ five people.

Resident customers have told her they’re “very happy” to be able to keep their jobs while the Manele hotel undergoes renovation and the lodge houses construction workers, she said.

Meanwhile, “tourism is down” on Lanai, she said.

“We know it’s going to be very slow,” she said, adding that she plans to downsize soon to one store, which will be named the Lanai Hula Hut, to ride out the downturn. Her store will sell jewelry, gifts and handmade products from Lanai.

She said the island’s business climate is “OK, not gangbusters, but hopefully we’ll survive until the end of the year.”On Wednesday, her businesses sold $1,000 worth of merchandise, which wasn’t bad during a slow business period, she said.

Allen also operates three vacation rental homes, for which she has applied for permits from the county Department of Planning. Her homes sometimes accommodate hunters from off island, who come seasonally, especially in February, March and April, she said.

The hunters also generate business in town, she said.

“A lot of hunters come in, and they buy gifts for their wives,” she said.

Hawaii residents want to visit Lanai, but they can’t afford to pay $900 a night to stay at a Four Seasons hotel, she said.

“We really need these (vacation) rentals,” she said. “There’s a lot of local people who want to come to Lanai.”

The plantation-style homes have been restored to the architectural style of the 1950s, she said. “They’re really cute, clean and (reasonably priced), with local discounts,” she added.

Allen, a former Paia resident, graduated from Baldwin High School in 1972. She raised her two daughters on Maui, where they attended Seabury Hall. She has 28 Maui Clothing stores statewide. She started Maui Clothing on Front Street in Lahaina in 1982, she said. Now, her daughters operate the clothing stores.

Allen said she has grown to love Lanai’s unassuming but hardworking people and the island’s laid-back lifestyle. The island has no stoplights, only one gas station and most roads have a 20-mph speed limit.

“I’m invested here,” she said. “I’m here to stay. I love this island. . . . This has become my special island.”

Once the renovated resorts open and visitors return in large numbers, “we’re going to have a gold mine,” Allen said. “We’re going to have a place where everybody’s going to want to visit.”

Lanai is, simply, a beautiful and a living remnant of an old Hawaii that’s mostly gone now, she said.

“It’s what Maui was like 50 to 60 years ago when I was young,” she said.