A group of anemones from San Francisco migrate down Lahaina’s Front Street on Oct. 31, 2018. The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo

Maui Toy Works owner Robert Loera will miss seeing children in costume and the annual Halloween keiki parade down Front Street.

Like the rest of the town, his store in the Best Western Pioneer Inn burned down on Aug. 8.

“We get to see all the kids, we love the kids,” Loera said of the annual Halloween festivities in Lahaina town. “The kids get to see our store. We love it all.”

Loera said Halloween, that brought crowds of thousands to the town, wasn’t a big shopping day but “we miss our keiki parade.”

“It’s part of our community,” he said.

Lumiere of “Beauty and the Beast” is among the thousands of costumed characters wandering Lahaina’s Front Street on Oct. 31, 2017. The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo

That community tradition, of course, is now halted after the fire. In years past, the celebration, once dubbed the “Mardi Gras of the Pacific,” drew around 30,000 people to Front Street. After people objected to the wild costumes and rowdy behavior in the historic district, Halloween events in the town were suspended from 2008 to 2010. Maui County helped revive the event in 2011 and the town focused on turning it into a more family-friendly occasion.

Front Street remained open to traffic, preventing large crowds from gathering, and the keiki parade began growing, with organizers saying families who previously would have left early to make way for the adult crowd were still out at night on Front Street.

COVID-19 also halted some festivities but a drive-thru, no-contact, family-friendly event was born called the “Halloween Monster Maze,” at The Outlets of Maui, which has also since burned down.

LahainaTown Action Committee President Sne Patel said the events will not come back anytime soon.

“We are definitely not having Halloween on Front Street for … probably eight to 10 years until the town gets rebuilt or where we go from there at that time,” he said, noting it’s going to be based on what the businesses and broader community want to see.

“I think it is too soon to answer, will that event carry on in the format that it once did. There are elements like the keiki parade, I know that were really just very well received, and so we definitely understand that there are elements that I think people really loved,” said Patel, who leads the committee that was one of the main organizers of the Halloween events.

Looking back, Patel said of Lahaina’s Halloween, “I think that event over the years has been one of those events that either you loved it, or you were against it. That’s just looking back at the challenges we had.”

“And now it’s time to rethink a lot of things that happened in Lahaina, right? And in looking to the future and even in our organization of what is it going to be that the community needs and would like to see?” Patel said.

He added that in the last five years or so there was strong movement toward the family-friendly events with art and production help from Fuzz Box Maui.

Patel said that restaurant and bars as well as retail locations did very well during Halloween when crowds filled the streets, especially because October is “shoulder season” when there is less travel to the islands, and “you saw an uptick” in visitors during the Halloween week.

“Whether or not you benefited from that night of, probably during that week as an art gallery or as another store, you saw an uptick in retail because that week brought in individuals that specially had come down for Halloween,” Patel said.

Maui Hands owner Panna Cappelli, whose Lahaina location burned in the fire, said she used to close her gallery doors early on Halloween to make way for the crowds. She said it was not a shopping event night. She did see “a little bit” of an uptick in customers during the day, but “not remarkable.”

Still, she called Halloween on Front Street “a really nice night event.”

Overall, Cappelli said she will not return to Lahaina as she may be retired by the time it is rebuilt.

She has locations in Makawao, Paia and Wailea remaining, but she called her 19-year-old location in Lahaina “my baby.”

“We still can’t get in, so it’s not like closure can happen yet. We are still not allowed in,” Cappelli said.

The location was the busiest and made up one-third of her income. It also carried works from almost 200 artists. Her stores have housed works of 300 Hawaii-based artists.

She said she has lots of artists and employees who lost their homes and mentally “they can’t go back to work yet.”

Her galleries and fellow artists have raised more than $40,000 for nine employees and artists who are victims of the wildfires.

“It’s not much money, but it helps. It also makes them feel loved,” she said.

Cappelli, too, has felt the love. She said rent for her Makawao gallery was reduced until the first of the new year by her landlord. And good customers from her more than 30 years in business have “just shown up,” coming by and saying, “I’m just going to buy something. I’m going to support you.”

Cappelli did not disclose how much she lost in the fire, but said that from insurance money she was able to pay the artists for their work that she had in Lahaina.

“I lost a lot personally,” she said, adding, however, that “I did not lose my reputation.”

An artwork fundraiser can be found at mauihands.com.

Her husband, Giovanni Cappelli, owner of Bistro Casanova in Kahului, is donating the profits from the restaurant until the end of the year to Maui Strong.

Maui Toy Works also has a GoFundMe fundraiser for its workers — five of the eight employees lost their homes in the fire, Loera said.

Unlike Cappelli, Loera said they want to go back to Lahaina town. They spent 12 years in their Pioneer Inn location and have spent 41 years in the Lahaina Cannery Mall, which was spared by the fire. But Loera said there are still issues such as water at the cannery, so they are not open yet. So he and wife, Barbara, have turned their focus to their sales online, where offerings include the top-selling book, “Goodnight, Goodnight, Lahaina Town.”

Loera said they received IT help on their mauitoyworks.com website from a new owner of Lahaina Printsellers, another business that was a victim of the fires.

Customers have given Loera hope, but the online sales do not ease the loss of the Front Street location where Loera said “our store did amazing.”

The Loeras were at their Front Street location on Aug. 8, preparing for the next day. Their doors were closed since the winds were so bad and there was no power. No tourists were around.

“We had no idea the big fire was coming up on us,” he said.

Lorea said he “got lucky,” as when he went to take out the trash, he could see “monster black” smoke coming over Lahaina Grill. He and his wife were able to leave and found routes out of town. They didn’t know it was the last time they’d see it.

“We figured we’d be back to work the next day,” Loera said.

* Staff Writer Melissa Tanji can be reached at mtanji@mauinews.com.

A group of anemones from San Francisco migrate down Lahaina’s Front Street on Oct. 31, 2018. The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo Lumiere of “Beauty and the Beast” is among the thousands of costumed characters wandering Lahaina’s Front Street on Oct. 31, 2017. The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo

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