Kapalua time-share units to be converted to hotel

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COURTESY MONTAGE HOTELS AND RESORTS
The Residences at Kapalua Bay is slated to become Montage Kapalua Bay next year.

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A 50-room hotel will replace unsold time-share units at Maui’s former Ritz-Carlton time-share and condominium resort in Kapalua under a plan by the property’s new owner and management firm.

The all-suite luxury hotel is projected to open early next year after a multimillion-dollar upgrade of the nine-building, 24-acre property now known as The Residences at Kapalua Bay, the firms announced Thursday.

After the conversion, the resort will become the Montage Kapalua Bay. It will have hotel, time-share and condo units and be managed by Montage Hotels & Resorts, a company hired by an affiliate of real estate firm Lantern Asset Management that acquired the Kapalua property earlier this year at a foreclosure auction for $100 million.

Dallas-based Lantern, which is owned by Centerbridge Capital Partners, also plans to sell 56 condominiums under the Montage brand as residences in rough alignment with the previous owner’s plan that had priced the condos from roughly $4 million to $10 million.

Andy Mitchell, president of Lantern, said in a statement that Montage will help make the property Maui’s premier luxury resort destination. Mitchell said the project will bring jobs and a renewed source of pride to the property.

California-based Montage was founded in 2002 by Alan Fuerstman as an “ultra-luxury” hotel management company. An initial Montage hotel in Laguna Beach, Calif., opened in 2003. A second Montage hotel opened in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 2008, and was followed by a third in Park City, Utah, in 2010. The Kapalua property is Montage’s fourth.

The Ritz-Carlton Club and Residences at Kapalua Bay opened in 2009 as a nine-building condo complex developed by Maui Land & Pineapple Co., The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. and Exclusive Resorts LLC on a 24-acre oceanfront site formerly occupied by the Kapalua Bay Hotel.

The $355 million project was caught in the economic recession and financial market meltdown before opening. Lehman Bros., the main lender for the project, filed bankruptcy in 2008, which kinked up condo sales and construction.