The Walk From Kings' Shops to A-Bay Isn't the Same Walk It Was Last Year

If you live at Waikoloa Beach Resort, you already have your route. Maybe it starts at Kings' Shops after the shops open, cuts along the walking path past the koi pond, and ends at Anaeho'omalu Bay in time for the light to go gold over the water. Maybe you go the other direction, starting at the beach and finishing with a smoothie near the food court. Either way, it's the same half-mile to mile of packed sand, lava rock, and shade trees you've walked a hundred times.

Here's what most people who live here haven't put together: three separate pieces of that same walk changed hands, changed purpose, or changed ownership within about the last year, and none of the three stories got told together. A retail center under new owners tore up its own landscaping and rebuilt it. A volunteer-led tour through a lava field started running again on a fixed schedule. And 27.3 acres at the far end of the beach, the last stretch that hadn't been developed, went to a completely different kind of owner than anything else on this coastline. Your walk is the same distance. Who controls each piece of it, and why, is not.

The shops end: new owners, old anniversary

Kings' Shops opened in 1991, which makes 2026 its 35th year on the Kohala Coast. That anniversary landed in the middle of a renovation, not after one. The retail center began a multi-phase construction project in July 2025, updating common areas, landscaping, and restrooms, with completion targeted for that winter. If you walked through last fall or into the start of this year, you likely saw that work happening alongside the regular Tuesday farmers market tables and evening hula performances, since the center stayed open through construction rather than closing for it.

Part of why this happened now traces back to who owns the property. Kings' Shops sold for $42.4 million in 2024 after a foreclosure, landing with a consortium that includes PacificRetail Capital Partners, Starwood Property Trust, and Taconic Capital Advisors. New ownership after a foreclosure sale is usually followed by capital investment if the new owners intend to hold, and that's what played out here. Individual tenants renovated alongside the center itself. CocoNene expanded its footprint, and Tori Richard took on its own remodel.

General manager Lynn Rostau framed the timing around the anniversary rather than the ownership change when she talked to reporters last fall:

"As we mark 35 years in 2026, possibility is in full bloom"

Whether you read the renovation as a landlord protecting an asset or a shopping center refreshing itself on a milestone year, the practical effect for a resident is the same. The path through the center looks different than it did in 2024, and the businesses along it, Roy's Waikoloa Bar & Grill, Foster's Kitchen, A-Bay's Island Grill, are still operating through it.

The middle: a trail that's easier to read than it used to be

Keep walking north from Kings' Shops and you'll hit the section of path locals call the King's Highway Foot Trail, part of the older network of footpaths that predate the resort by centuries. About a quarter mile up, the trail opens into the Waikoloa Petroglyph Preserve, one of the better-preserved fields of ki'i pōhaku, or rock carvings, on this side of the island. Most of the images are what you'd expect from a working trail system: human figures, canoes, animals. One carving, further in, shows a warrior on horseback, which places it after Western contact and makes it one of the more unusual pieces in the field.

For years the preserve was something you walked through on your own, reading whatever signage happened to be posted. That's changed. Free guided tours now run on a set schedule, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:30 a.m., led by a local volunteer who walks visitors through the history of the site, including the concepts of mana and puka, and the broader significance of King Kamehameha's King's Trail running through this stretch of Kohala. It's not a resort amenity in the traditional sense. There's no booking fee and no gift shop pitch at the end. It's closer to what you'd get from a knowledgeable neighbor who happens to know the place better than you do.

If you've lived here long enough to have walked past that field a dozen times without stopping, the tour schedule is worth putting on your calendar once. The carvings don't move. What you understand about them changes depending on whether someone's there to explain the difference between a petroglyph marking a boundary and one marking a birth.

The beach end: the last open acreage just found a different kind of owner

Head the other direction from Kings' Shops, past Anaeho'omalu Bay itself, and you reach the two fishponds that give the bay its name. Kahapapa and Ku'uali'i were built by Native Hawaiians to trap and raise mullet, or 'ama'ama, for consumption, part of a system that once produced an estimated two million pounds of fish a year across ponds like these before Western contact. Walk the loop trail around Ku'uali'i, the larger of the two, and you're tracing the same retaining wall that's been managing that water for centuries.

Keep going south past Lava Lava Beach Club, a little over half a mile along the shoreline, and you reach a stretch of undeveloped beachfront called 'Anaeho'omalu Kapalaoa. Until last year it was the last piece of Waikoloa Beach Resort's coastline that hadn't been built on. In September 2025, Waikoloa Land Company transferred the 27.3-acre parcel to its lineal Native Hawaiian descendants, with the land now owned and stewarded by the nonprofit Nā 'Oiwi O Pu'uanahulu. The effort was initiated by Waikoloa Land Company and facilitated through the Trust for Public Land.

The families involved trace their connection to this land back nearly two thousand years. Lehua Alapa'i, one of the descendants now involved in stewarding the parcel, put the timeline plainly:

"Pretty much from 900 AD on, 18-plus generations lived there"

The parcel includes heiau, or places of worship, anchialine ponds, petroglyph fields, and sections of ancient trail network that still exist on the ground today. It is not zoned, marketed, or positioned as an amenity for the resort around it. It's a return, not a redevelopment, and it means the southern anchor of your walking loop is now under different stewardship than the rest of the coastline you're used to.

What actually changes for the person taking the walk

None of this rearranges the physical footpath. You can still start at Kings' Shops, work your way to the water, and end at a sunset that faces west-northwest, clear enough on a good evening to make out Haleakalā across the channel. What's different is what you're walking through and who's responsible for each stretch of it.

A few things worth knowing before your next walk:

• Kings' Shops' renovation covered common areas, landscaping, and restrooms. The shops and restaurants themselves stayed open throughout, so nothing along your usual stop closed because of it, even while the work was underway last fall and winter.
• The petroglyph preserve tours run Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:30 a.m., free, volunteer-led, and worth checking Kings' Shops' event page before you go since schedules for community programming can shift.
• The Kahapapa and Ku'uali'i fishponds are still managed with traditional gates that let fish in and then close behind them, the same method that's kept this system working for generations.
• 'Anaeho'omalu Kapalaoa, at the south end of the beach walk, is now stewarded by Nā 'Oiwi O Pu'uanahulu rather than owned by the resort's land company, which is worth remembering if you're used to thinking of that stretch as simply part of the property.

The walk from Kings' Shops to A-Bay was never really one thing. It's a shopping center that spent a year renovating, a trail through a preserved lava field, and a beach that ends at land recently returned to the people who lived there first. Living here means you get to notice all three changing within the same year, which is more than most guides to this stretch of coast will tell you.

If you're curious how any of this touches property here, or you just want to talk with someone who walks this coastline as often as you do, Denni Keyes is always glad to connect.