"Being a better steward of our land, being better role models in our community." That is how Nakoa Pabre, owner of Umeke's Fish Market Bar & Grill, described the plan for the stretch of Alii Drive his family has fed for decades. He was not talking about tourism marketing or a county task force. He was talking about a decision three longtime Kona restaurant owners made in March 2026 to pool their businesses, buy up two of the most historically loaded buildings on Kailua Bay, and try to do something the county's own parking task force has not managed in over a year: make downtown Kona feel like downtown Kona again.
That contrast is the story here. This September, Alii Drive gets its biggest crowd of the year for the Queen Liliʻuokalani Canoe Race. A few blocks away, storefronts sit empty in a shopping village built on the bones of the island's first luxury hotel, and the county's plan to fix downtown parking stalled out under legal pressure. Both things are true at once, and understanding why tells you more about where downtown Kona is headed than either fact alone.
Five Days on the Water, Confirmed for September 3 Through 7
Kai ʻŌpua Canoe Club has hosted the Queen Liliʻuokalani Long Distance Canoe Race every Labor Day weekend since 1972, and the 2026 edition marks 52 years running. Roughly 2,500 paddlers travel in from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong, the mainland, and Canada to race in and around Kailua Bay, which is what earns it the title organizers use: the world's largest long-distance outrigger canoe race.
The schedule spreads across the full Labor Day weekend, not just Saturday. In a typical year it runs like this, though exact heat times shift and are worth confirming closer to the date:
| Day | What's on the Water | Where to Watch Free |
|---|---|---|
| Thu, Sep 3 | Warm-up heats, shorter races | Aliʻi Drive, Kailua Pier |
| Fri, Sep 4 | Sprint and iron events | Kailua Bay waterfront |
| Sat, Sep 5 | The marquee 18-mile long-distance race to Hōnaunau | Huliheʻe Palace grounds, Kailua Pier |
| Sun, Sep 6 | Double-hull, OC1, OC2, and SUP divisions | Kamakahonu Beach |
| Mon, Sep 7 | Kupuna Classic, paddlers 50 and older | Kamakahonu Beach |
No ticket is required for any of it. The races start and finish at Kamakahonu Beach, the small protected cove next to Kailua Pier, and the grounds of Huliheʻe Palace along Aliʻi Drive give front-row views of the same water without paying for anything but a parking spot.
That last part is where it gets complicated.
The Parking Fight That Didn't Get Fixed
Kona's parking problem is not new, but it is not settled either. In April 2025, Mayor Kimo Alameda announced a 90-day trial, starting May 1 of that year, converting the northbound lane of Aliʻi Drive between Kailua Pier and Hualālai Road into roughly 50 free street parking stalls, with the road running one-way southbound. Alameda framed it as a test, something the county would make permanent if it worked. Ross Wilson, executive director of the Kailua Village Business Improvement District, called the 90 days a reasonable window to see whether traffic signals at Kuakini Highway's intersections with Palani and Hualālai Roads could get synchronized well enough to keep the new pattern from creating a bottleneck.
More than a year later, the underlying pricing problem is still on the table. As of that April 2025 report, paid public parking along the same strip ran from $12 to $21 an hour. By May 2026, a Hoodline report on the ongoing squeeze confirmed that a county ordinance meant to cap those rates had been shelved amid legal pushback. Julie Ziemelis, who founded the Fix Paid Parking in Kona Facebook group to keep the conversation alive, has been pushing the issue in public for more than a year. The free street parking from the 2025 trial still exists. The rate cap that was supposed to address the private lots around it does not.
For someone planning to walk down for Saturday's long-distance race, the practical takeaway matches what other race-weekend guides have already found. The municipal lot at Hualālai and Kuakini fills earliest, so arriving before the morning start and walking a few blocks from the south end of Aliʻi is the more comfortable plan than circling for a spot near the pier.
What the Empty Storefronts Have to Do With Any of This
Kona Inn Shopping Village sits at the center of that same strip, built on the site of the Kona Inn, the 20-room hotel that opened in 1928 and effectively started commercial tourism in Kona. The hotel stopped housing overnight guests in 1976 and the property became a shopping village in 1980. For decades that transition worked. Lately it has been showing its age, with visitor accounts describing storefronts sitting vacant next to the boutiques and galleries that remain.
That is the backdrop the county's parking fight is playing out against. A shopping center with open vacancies and an oceanfront road with private lots charging premium hourly rates is not a combination that fixes itself through signage or a lane restriping. It needs something to actually pull people back onto that block, not just past it.
Three Restaurant Families Bought the Two Most Historic Buildings on the Bay
That is where the Hawaiʻi Island Restaurant Group comes in. Jackie Rey's, Harbor House, and Umeke's Fish Market Bar & Grill have each served surf-and-turf meals in Kailua-Kona for decades. Harbor House has operated at Honokohau Harbor for about 25 years. In March 2026 the three joined forces to pool resources, create quality jobs, and give back to the community, and the group now employs roughly 300 people across its restaurants.
Within weeks of forming, the group expanded its portfolio by purchasing Kona Inn Restaurant and Kona Canoe Club, both on Aliʻi Drive. Kona Inn Restaurant sits inside the former hotel property and looks out over the same bay, from the Kamakahonu Historical Landmark at King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel to the Royal Kona Resort. Kona Canoe Club, once a sports bar owned by former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale, sits right along the breaking shoreline.
Pabre grew up in Kona and remembers looking forward to trips downtown to the old Kona Inn lawn, where events used to happen, and to the Fun Factory arcade that once anchored the same shopping center. That memory is doing real work in how the group talks about its plans. Pabre has said the group is "coming up with creative ways to bring life back to the whole shopping center," not just running two more restaurants under a shared banner.
Why This Looks Like the Fix the County Couldn't Deliver
The county's approach to downtown Kona has been procedural: a traffic trial, a proposed rate cap, a stalled ordinance, a Facebook group keeping the pressure on. None of that changes what is actually inside the buildings along Aliʻi Drive. The restaurant group's approach is different in kind. Three families who already understand the rhythms of this waterfront, who know what filled the Kona Inn lawn before it emptied out, are now the ones who own two of its most recognizable spaces.
That does not solve the parking rate problem. A visitor or a local still pays whatever the private lots charge to park near the pier. But it does address the other half of the equation, the half that decides whether people bother to park there at all. A revived Kona Inn Restaurant and a Kona Canoe Club under local, hospitality-minded ownership gives downtown a reason to pull people in that the county's traffic engineering never could.
What to Watch For If You Live Here
If you're already in Kona, the next several days give you a chance to see this play out firsthand. Head down for any part of the September 3 through 7 race weekend and you'll see the crowd downtown can still draw when there's something worth showing up for. Then take a slower walk through Kona Inn Shopping Village in the months after and watch which storefronts start filling back in under the restaurant group's ownership versus which stay dark. That gap will tell you more about where downtown Kona is actually headed than any county meeting will.
If you're weighing what it means to own property near a waterfront this actively in motion, whether that's a condo a few blocks off Aliʻi or a home further up toward Kuakini, Hawaii Development Group can walk you through what these kinds of shifts tend to mean for value and livability on this stretch of the coast. Schedule a Private Consultation with Kekoa Akana to talk through it.
