What's New in Kailua Village This Summer: Reopenings, a One-Way Street, and Where to Take Guests

If you live along the Kona coast, you already know Ali'i Drive by muscle memory. Which stoplight to skip. Which turn spits you out closest to the pier. Which restaurant to send your cousin to when she flies in Thursday.

This summer, some of that muscle memory is out of date.

The century-old anchor at the middle of the Village has new owners and a new menu. The street pattern through downtown is running one direction. And the resort at the north end has quietly built a Sunday night ritual worth putting on the calendar. None of it is a headline on its own. Taken together, it is the biggest reset Historic Kailua Village has had in years, and it changes the answer to a very local question: where are you actually taking people this month.

The Kona Inn chapter is not what it was in April

The building at 75-5744 Ali'i Drive has been in business since 1928. For most of the last several years it was struggling. The Kona Inn Restaurant limped through the retirement of longtime part-owner Steve Falcinella, the pandemic, and the 2023 introduction of expensive paid parking to Historic Kailua Village. The leases and contents for Kona Inn Restaurant and the adjacent Kona Canoe Club were listed at $3 million in 2024, then cut to $1.5 million in March 2025.

That is the backstory a lot of residents missed. Here is what actually happened next.

On June 18, 2026, the Island Restaurant Group — the same operators behind Jackie Rey's, Harbor House, and Umekes Fish Market Bar & Grill — launched a revamped menu and a revitalized dining room at Kona Inn. If you eat out in Kona you already know those three names. Putting them behind the Village's most photographed lawn is a bigger deal than a menu refresh sounds.

A few things to know before you walk in:

• General manager Leila Kanuha stayed on. She has worked at Kona Inn for 19 years.
• The crab cakes, calamari, and the mud pie are unchanged.
• The old belt-and-pulley ceiling fan system is still running. The new ownership tracked down the original manufacturer to source parts.
• The Kona cut prime rib is seasoned with Hawaiian sea salt and served with garlic mashed potatoes, au jus, and horseradish cream. The seafood stack layers fresh ahi, crab cake, chef's rice, red pepper aioli, chile shoyu glaze, and crispy wontons.

Kanuha told Big Island Now that under the new ownership "every single day has been something better and more to look forward to."

The Kona Canoe Club next door is on a slower timeline. Once a sports bar owned by Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale, it sits along the breaking shoreline of Kailua Bay, and Island Restaurant Group plans to rebrand while paying homage to the canoe. Watch that space through the fall.

What this means for your Thursday-night plan

For the last two years, the honest answer to "should I take Aunty to Kona Inn" was "the view is still perfect, but pick something else for the food." That answer is now out of date. Give it a month for the new kitchen to settle, then send people back. The lawn behind the restaurant, looking straight into Kailua Bay, is still one of the best sunset seats on the island.

The street itself is running one way

If you have driven through the Village recently and felt like you were doing it wrong, you were not imagining things.

Ali'i Drive through Kailua Village is now testing a one-way southbound pattern with new parking spaces, and the "all day free parking" is actually 2-hour parking, structured that way to keep employees from sitting in the spots during their shifts. That last detail is the one worth internalizing. If you park in front of Hulihe'e Palace for a beach morning and a long lunch, you can get a ticket.

Two practical takes for residents:

1. If you are running an errand under two hours, the new spaces are a genuine improvement. You are more likely to find a spot on the makai side than you were last summer.
2. If you are eating dinner and staying for drinks, park once, up the hill on a side street, and walk down. The Village is roughly a mile end-to-end. That is a shorter walk than most parking lot loops on O'ahu.

The paid parking that arrived in 2023 has not gone away. It changed the economics of a quick coffee run, and it is part of why some Ali'i Drive businesses have quietly turned over in the last three years. When you hear a neighbor complain that "downtown isn't what it used to be," the parking meter is a bigger factor than the menu at any one restaurant.

Sunday dinner has a new default

The other quiet shift this summer is at the north end of the Village, at Royal Kona Resort.

Starting Sunday, July 5, Royal Kona kicked off a Chef's Summer Sunday Dinner Experience: an elevated buffet with a prime rib and Colorado lamb rack carving station, made-to-order Parmesan wheel pasta, a fresh seafood bar, chef-inspired specialties, and desserts.

Here is the run of dates worth pinning to the fridge:

Seating runs from 5 to 8:30 p.m. Reservations at 808-930-3263.

Why this matters for residents: Sunday night in Kona has always been a soft spot. A lot of kitchens close early, or run a limited menu, or are packed with cruise-ship stragglers. A carving-station buffet with reservations, walking distance from downtown, is a genuinely new option for hosting family without cooking. Try it once in July before it books up in August.

Where the late crowd is landing

If Kona Inn and Royal Kona cover the traditional dinner slot, the after-dinner slot has shifted too.

Temple Kitchen + Bar is oceanfront on Ali'i Drive, open daily from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., with brunch at 9 a.m. on weekends. Kona is not a late-night town. An 11 p.m. kitchen with the water off the lanai is a meaningful piece of civic infrastructure, and it has become the default answer for guests who land on a red-eye and want food and a cocktail before they crash.

Two other names to keep on the mental map for out-of-town guests, both walkable from the pier: Jackie Rey's Kona itself, which opens daily at 3:30 p.m. with a 3:30–5:30 happy hour, a seafood trio of seared ahi, coconut shrimp, and crab cake, and the JRey's '44 Mai Tai, and Umekes Fish Market Bar & Grill for the poke lunch you can send someone to when you cannot join them.

The pattern here is worth noticing. Island Restaurant Group now operates three of the anchor tables in Kailua Village. When one group runs the reservation book at three of the busiest rooms in town, sourcing and staffing decisions ripple across all of them. That is not visible on any single menu. It shows up in whether your 6:30 p.m. table is actually ready at 6:30.

The current-resident cheat sheet

If you have been in Kona long enough to have your own routine, here is what to adjust for the next eight weeks:

• Send visitors to Kona Inn again. The view was always the reason. The kitchen is now worth the trip too.
• Do not park in a free Ali'i Drive space for a long lunch. Two hours means two hours.
• Book Royal Kona for one Sunday between now and August 23 if you have family in town or a birthday to cover.
• Default to Temple for late arrivals and drinks after the sun drops.
• Watch the Kona Canoe Club space. Whatever Island Restaurant Group does there will change the mix at the south end of the Village.

The through-line across all of it: the parts of Kailua Village that felt like they were coasting a year ago are being actively rebuilt. That is unusual for a stretch of coast this small, and it is happening in the same twelve-month window that paid parking, a one-way traffic test, and new ownership at the oldest restaurant on the street all landed at once. If you live here, the practical effect is that your list of "where I take people" is due for an edit.

If you have been thinking about the value of a Kailua Village address, whether you own on Ali'i already or you are watching a condo in Kona Reef or Kona Makai, this is the kind of neighborhood momentum that shows up in resale two and three years out, not in this month's median. Now is the moment to walk the street with fresh eyes.

When you are ready to talk through what any of it means for your own property, or for a purchase in Kailua-Kona, the team at Hawai'i Development Group is local, native Hawaiian-owned, and happy to meet you for coffee on Ali'i. Work with Hawai'i Development Group.