Who is paying, who is getting paid, and what it is costing the members of Princeville at Hanalei.
Every fight in this community comes back to one question: who benefits? On one side is a global investment firm with over $100 billion under management. On the other are the homeowners of Princeville, whose dues are being spent, whose open space is at risk, and whose home values hang in the balance.
Every piece of this story rolls up to one company.
When a lawyer threatens our open space, or a mailer tells you how to vote, follow it up this chain.
Hawaiʻi’s public pension, the Employees’ Retirement System, which covers teachers and other public workers, has committed a quarter of a billion dollars to Starwood funds.
From the pension system’s own quarterly holdings reports, as of September 30, 2025.
Doug Chin was Hawaiʻi’s Attorney General from March 2015 to February 2018, then Lieutenant Governor. The Attorney General’s office is the pension system’s legal counsel. Since December 2018 he has been a director at the Honolulu law firm Starn O’Toole Marcus & Fisher, which describes itself as specializing “in large real estate and hotel industry transactions.” In 2024 he registered as a Honolulu lobbyist for two hotel companies, Hilton Grand Vacations and Park Hotels & Resorts.
Hired while Sam George was president. On May 28, 2021, Chin signed his firm on as the PHCA’s counsel, to advise on the Association’s “potential opposition to plans of and actions taken by SOF-XI Kauai PV Holdings, L.P. c/o Starwood Capital Group.” Sam George, an attorney, was PHCA president then. He had joined the Board on February 20, 2020, appointed by the directors rather than elected by members, on a motion by Treasurer Joseph Celona, months before Starwood’s August 2020 glamping plan, and in 2025 he took the stand as Starwood’s witness at the Mull & White trial, telling the court he came voluntarily and had met with Starwood’s lawyers first. Sam George’s profile →
The Jeff Stone thread. The same engagement letter discloses that the firm “previously represented Mr. Jeff Stone” with respect to “certain past transactions involving the Golf Course.” Jeff Stone’s Resort Group once owned the Princeville resort, golf courses included, and calls itself Princeville’s master developer. Rose Krebs and Ace Hodgin’s daughter, Jen Krebs, and her partner Sean Combs started Hawaii Project Development. Sean was Asset & Land Manager and VP of Princeville Utility Company for The Resort Group’s Princeville Development, and Jen has designed for The Resort Group. So the firm now advising Rose’s Board once represented Jeff Stone, the developer their family’s company worked for. See the Ace & Rose map →
These are open questions under the rules of professional conduct (HRPC 1.11 and 1.9), not proven findings.
Owning the hotel comes with a block of votes in our elections, two votes per door, and the hotel votes as one.
In 2024, 1,008 of Rose Krebs’s roughly 1,491 votes came from the hotel’s block. That is why our Action Plan calls for ending the hotel’s two votes per door, and why every homeowner’s vote matters.
Money paid out of the dues of the very homeowners the directors are supposed to serve.
The Association steered legal work to a firm connected to Rose Krebs and Ace Hodgin’s own dispute against the members and the PHCA, until the conflict forced a recusal. The cost to members: roughly $156,000.
In June 2025 the PHCA agreed to pay $60,000 to Director Rose Krebs and her husband, Ace Hodgin, to settle their dispute with the Association. The money came from members’ dues.
In the six years after Starwood bought the golf course, the PHCA spent $613,335 on lawyers, according to its own IRS tax filings. That is our dues. Members deserve to know which firms were paid, for what, and whether any of it went to protecting the Dedication and our open space.
(The $622,600 the PHCA recovered in 2023 was the court’s 2018 award in an older lawsuit over the front-entrance roads. It repaid legal bills from before Starwood arrived.)
On the other side of the ledger, Starwood is spending to win.
Starwood lost the Mull & White trial in 2025 and has appealed. Four law firms represent it: Damon Key Leong Kupchak Hastert and Dentons in Honolulu and, on the appeal, the national firms Davis Polk & Wardwell (appellate lawyer Kannon K. Shanmugam) and Paul, Weiss. Its corporate attorney, James Raved, speaks for Starwood at our Board meetings and on Nextdoor. And the “Friends of Princeville” mailer, signed by Bernard Markowicz, who by Ace Hodgin’s own public admission received all of Starwood’s proxy votes when he ran for our Board, urges members to remove our elected President and Vice President.
A firm does not spend this kind of money out of civic feeling. It spends it because the prize, the right to develop protected open space in one of the most valuable resort communities in Hawaiʻi, is worth far more than the legal bills.
On April 29, 2026, Starwood “temporarily” suspended most redemptions from its $22 billion Starwood Real Estate Income Trust (SREIT) and cut its payout rate from 6.3% to 4.7%, after a year in which its value per share fell about 6%. SREIT has also changed chief executives twice: its founding CEO was replaced in May 2023, as investors were pushing to withdraw their money, and his successor resigned effective July 28, 2025. Barry Sternlicht remains its chairman. SREIT is a separate fund from the one that owns Princeville’s properties, but it shows the pressure the firm is under.
Once, in the roughly $156,000 and counting drained by an avoidable, conflicted legal dispute and a $60,000 insider payout. And again, in the lost value and marketability of our homes for as long as Starwood’s development threat hangs over Princeville.
Follow the money, and the same names keep appearing on the side that costs the community.
Sources: Hawaiʻi Employees’ Retirement System quarterly holdings (FOIA) reports as of March 31, June 30, September 30 and December 31, 2025 (ers.ehawaii.gov); Starn O’Toole engagement letter signed by Doug Chin, May 28, 2021, including §9 (on file); Starn O’Toole Marcus & Fisher announcement (Dec. 17, 2018); City and County of Honolulu 2024 lobbyist registrations; hawaiiprojectdevelopment.com/about; theresortgroup.com; Mull & White trial transcript, June 27, 2025 (Sam George’s testimony); PHCA–Hodgin/Krebs settlement agreement (June 27, 2025); PHCA Form 990s, FY2018–19 through FY2024–25 (Part IX, line 11b, legal fees); PHCA General Meeting minutes (Feb. 20, 2020); Loo-dispute cost accounting (on file); PHCA Board meetings, August 2026 (the Loo firm’s recusal); PHCA 2024 election results; Mull & White v. SOF-XI Kauai PV Golf, Fifth Circuit Court, Case No. 5CCV-21-0000063, and Starwood’s appeal, CAAP-25-0000609 (counsel of record, including the May 29, 2026 notice of Kannon K. Shanmugam’s move to Davis Polk & Wardwell); Civil Beat, “Kauai County Council Joins Fight Against Proposed Glamping Resort” (Nov. 2020); Hart Howerton glamping site plan for Starwood (Aug. 10, 2020); SREIT stockholder update (April 29, 2026), Bloomberg (April 29, 2026) and The Real Deal (May 1, 2026); Bisnow, “Starwood REIT Replaces CEO Who Had Led It Since 2017 Launch” (May 12, 2023); SREIT proxy statement (June 17, 2026). Characterizations and questions are the opinion of Protect Princeville.
