Jonathan Helton

Imagine if every reconstructed shop in Lahaina had to be surrounded by a parking lot.

Not only would that force businesses to downsize — since property owners would have to use more of their land for parking — it would strip the historic, walkable town of its much-loved charm.

Recognizing that existing county rules would result in this, the Maui County Office of Recovery issued a directive a few months ago that waived certain county parking mandates for rebuilding projects in Lahaina’s historic zoning districts.

In particular, omitting minimum parking requirements will help the rebuilt town be as pedestrian friendly as it was before being destroyed by the August 2023 wildfires.

As the Office of Recovery pointed out in its edict: “The narrow streets, small storefronts and buildings close together created the walkable, charming character that made Lahaina special.”

Current county parking rules require that newly built structures feature a certain amount of off-street parking. The map below shows the areas where that regulation no longer applies, thanks to the Office of Recovery’s order.

The Miyaki Building at 764 Front Street, which housed Maui Tees and DeRubeis Fine Art before the fires, is an example of a property that will benefit from parking rules being waived for rebuilding projects in Lahaina.

According to rebuilding plans submitted by the owner in May 2025, the 5,600-square-foot building previously offered seven parking stalls. Existing rules would have required that there be at least 11.

Considering each parking stall takes up about 150 square feet of land, adding four spaces to the property would have reduced the potential building size by 600 square feet. That would have meant less space available for businesses to operate, which could have limited the amount of rental income generated by the property.

The Office of Recovery took a step in the right direction by waiving this rule for wildfire recovery, but parking mandates are burdensome for more than just Lahaina’s town core. The Maui County Council should look to codify the office’s directive, as well as waive such rules for the entire county.

To start, the Council could pass legislation exempting buildings in all of the county’s historic districts from parking mandates. A county law would be better than the current directive, which relies on Mayor Richard Bissen’s temporary emergency orders.

The Office of Recovery has advised making the directive permanent in an ordinance, but neither the Council nor the Maui Planning Department have initiated these changes.

The Council should also reconsider the value of parking mandates in general. Rather than impose broad mandates, Maui County should allow homebuilders and businesses to make parking decisions based on the unique needs of individual projects.

A strip mall in Kihei, after all, might have different needs than a shop in Paia or Hana, But current parking rules treat all of them the same.

Ideally, the Council will take action to help Lahaina and all of Maui, so future projects don’t stall out because of inflexible rules.

Jonathan Helton is a policy analyst at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii