BUSINESS BRIEFS
Kahala resort updating rooms
Advertiser Staff and News Services
The new owner of the Kahala Mandarin Oriental Hawaii said it plans to spend several million dollars to update the hotel's 364 rooms, giving the property its first significant upgrade in 10 years.
Kahala Hotel Investors LLC, an affiliate of Hawai'i-based real estate acquisition firm Trinity Investments LLC, recently bought the hotel from Kahala Royal Corp., a company owned by Japanese businessman Katsumi Iida.
The new owner is discussing management terms with the hotel's current operator, Mandarin Oriental, which has run O'ahu's only AAA 5-Diamond rated hotel since 1996.
WORK TO BEGIN AT STORAGE SITE
Hawaii Self Storage will break ground today on a four-story, 171,000-square-foot storage facility at the corner of Wai'alae Avenue and Kapi'-olani Boulevard.
The facility is expected to open in fall 2006 and will house approximately 1,550 climate-controlled units ranging from 16 to 300 square feet. It is the third self-storage facility built by local development company MW Group Ltd.
The company operates Hawaii Self Storage-Salt Lake, and Hawaii Self Storage-Pearl City, a 115,000-square-foot facility that opened this summer.
MW Group plans to open a total of eight self-storage facilities on O'ahu within the next few years, including a Kapolei location.
DEAD CONCERT DOWNLOADS END
SAN FRANCISCO — The Grateful Dead, the psychedelic jam band that toured for three decades, has angered some of its biggest fans by asking a nonprofit Web site to halt — at least temporarily — the free downloading of concert recordings.
Representatives for the band earlier this month directed the Internet Archive, a site that catalogues content on Web sites, to stop making recordings of the group's concerts available for download, band spokesman Dennis McNally said yesterday.
Fans, who for decades have freely taped and traded the band's live performances, quickly initiated an online petition that argued the band shouldn't change the rules midway through the game.
