Makaha Valley Resort sold to South Korean company, KH Group at $20.7 million

A U.S. bankruptcy judge has approved a sale of 644 acres in Makaha Valley, positioning a South Korean company to develop the property previously slated for a resort featuring a golf course designed by Tiger Woods.

Judge Robert Faris confirmed the sale Friday in Honolulu after no competing bids were made to rival one made in May by an affiliate of Seoul-based KH Group.

KH Group’s $20.7 million purchase is expected to close by Aug. 2.

Sale proceeds will go toward paying creditors of Canadian firm Pacific Links US Holdings Inc. and seven affiliates, which had pursued resort development on the site but filed bankruptcy in early 2021 amid financial trouble.

KH Group, a conglomerate branching into the resort business, is expected to pursue development in the valley where a major resort had been envisioned for over 50 years but was never realized beyond one hotel, two golf courses and relatively few homes.

Resort development efforts in the valley where sugar cane once grew date back to the 1950s when local business tycoon Chinn Ho floated plans to turn 3,000 acres of the valley and surrounding areas including beachfront land into a resort with eight or nine hotels, around 7,000 homes, mountain-ledge restaurants accessible only by cable car, shopping, hiking, fishing, hunting, horseback riding and other activities.

Ho, who developed Waikiki’s Ilikai hotel in 1964, built two golf courses in Makaha Valley along with a 200-room hotel that opened in 1969. But the operations struggled under subsequent owners. The hotel closed in 1995 and was razed in 2014. One golf course continues to operate, but the other has been closed for a decade.

Pacific Links bought Makaha Golf Club West in 2011 and two years later acquired Makaha Valley Country Club, formerly known as Makaha East, along with the shuttered hotel and undeveloped sites zoned for residential or resort use.

In 2016, Pacific Links unveiled a plan to develop up to 766 visitor accommodation units and homes on the 644-acre site in partnership with local developer Stanford Carr.

Three years later Pacific Links announced that TGR Design, led by Woods, would redevelop the shuttered western course as the centerpiece of its envisioned new resort.

Pacific Links, however, struggled financially and could not realize its plan. After unsuccessfully trying to sell the property, the company filed bankruptcy.

KH Group was established as an electronics company in 1975 and has since expanded into a conglomerate with about 10,000 employees and over $800 million in annual revenue spread over industries that include broadcasting, metal die casting, construction and real estate development.

The company acquired the Grand Hyatt Seoul hotel in 2019, and in 2021 won an auction to buy Alpensia Resort, a Korean ski resort that served as a venue for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, where KH Group said its intention is to develop more of the property to make it the “best resort in Korea.”