Developers have failed to start construction on the 250-room project for the past two decades.

Kauaʻi’s largest private landowner first set out to build a resort on the island’s rural Westside more than 20 years ago, and the county gave the storied Robinson family the green light it needed to proceed.

Permits were approved, zoning designations were changed and supporters touted how the project would help diversify the local economy amid the looming collapse of the sugar industry. The Gay & Robinson plantation had served as a primary source of employment in West Kaua‘i for more than a century.

But the plan to convert the old Robinson family mansion into a 250-room plantation-style inn on the 170-acre Kapalawai site hit a series of stumbling blocks and never materialized. New Dubai-based

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