One Wailuku Theater Just Opened, One Is Going Dark, and One Is Still Rising
October 22, 2026
October 22, 2026
In the first week of October, F&H Construction crews poured concrete for the lower and upper header walls of two retail spaces at the corner of Vineyard and North Church streets. Certified Welding set the structural steel beams above them. The building will be Hālau of ʻŌiwi Art. Anyone parking in the Wailuku Garage on a First Friday has been walking past it for 18 months, and you can watch the work any time on a live video feed from Wailuku Live.
The construction site is one piece of a bigger change. Three performance buildings sit within a few blocks of each other in downtown Wailuku, and in roughly the same twelve months one has just opened, one is preparing to close, and one is still going up. Live performance in town is shifting off Market Street toward Main and Church. For part of 2027, the stage that holds it all together may be the newest one.
MAPA's Naylor Theatre is at 2027 Main Street, in the old National Dollar Store building. It belongs to the Maui Academy of Performing Arts' Main Street Arts Project. The first production there was Cabaret, which ran November 14 to 30, 2025. The theater was formally opened and named on January 7, 2026, as Maui Now reported. The same story described the building as the first permanent home for an organization that had gone long stretches without one.
The Naylor is a flexible black box, so its seat count changes with each show's layout. When construction started, MAPA gave the planned capacity as 185. If you were at First Friday in April, you may have seen it before most people did. That night MAPA ran guided tours every 10 minutes from 6 to 8 p.m. and showed rehearsals for Frozen.
Here is what's on the 2026–27 MAPA season after Anastasia closed in September:
Those dates matter more than a normal season schedule would, because of what is happening a block and a half away on Market Street.
The Historic ʻĪao Theater at 68 N. Market St. is close to 100 years old, and its roof needs replacing. The Maui News reported on September 18 that Maui County has budgeted about $3.8 million for the restoration. The theater is expected to go dark for several months in 2027 while the work gets done.
Kristi Scott of Maui OnStage told The Maui News how uncertain the timing still is:
"We don't have a date, but we were told it would be within 2027. It's a little hard to program not knowing what's going on."
In the same article she said the company is "having to come up with alternate venues." She also said the closure will cost Maui OnStage rental revenue, and that "we're good up through the end of this year." So the ʻĪao's October run of ʻAinakea, Witch Perfect and Broadway on Maui with Tony winner Lauren Patten was its last stretch on a known schedule.
Maui OnStage's own fundraiser isn't even at the theater. "Raise the Roof! A Sneak Peek Fundraiser" was first set for September 26. It is now scheduled for Saturday, November 21, 2026, at Ocean Organic Vodka Farm & Distillery. According to The Maui News, guests will get clues about upcoming productions hidden in the decorations and costumes. Whoever comes closest to guessing next season wins a chance at season tickets. It also falls on the first weekend of Streetcar at the Naylor.
Hālau of ʻŌiwi Art went up on the site once set aside for a three-story county office building. The larger civic complex was never funded. Plans call for hula and other ʻōiwi arts, classrooms and studios, workshops, cultural exhibits, event and performance space, a kitchen, and retail and food-and-beverage space. A courtyard and a public outdoor plaza are part of the design too. Hawaiʻi Public Radio has described it as a permanent home for hula and related Native Hawaiian arts that will also serve as a resilience center and disaster shelter.
The performance space almost came in without its finishes. Maui Now reported in May that the project was bid in fall 2023 at $52.7 million, about $6.2 million over budget. The county kept the contract and cut costs instead. Cast-in-place concrete walls became mostly precast tilt-up panels, and the high clerestory windows, exposed wood beams, stone veneer and stamped courtyard concrete were dropped. A $4 million add-back puts several items back: commercial kitchen equipment, telecom and security, a rooftop photovoltaic system, audio-visual systems, and acoustic treatments for the second-floor event space. That brings the estimated total to about $50.5 million, compared with an original $46.5 million budget. The Maui County Council's June 19, 2026 meeting record shows both bills enacted as Ordinances 6005 and 6006.
As for when it opens, the contractor's posted schedule says completion by April 19, 2027, "subject to change." Maui Now's May report said construction should finish in summer 2027, with a grand opening in the fall.
Line up the dates. The ʻĪao is expected to go dark for several months sometime in 2027. The hālau's grand opening is projected for fall 2027. MAPA has Naylor shows booked for February, April to May, and July 2027. If the roof work starts before the hālau opens, a Main Street black box that opened in January 2026 could be the only downtown Wailuku stage with a published calendar for a good part of that year.
MAPA spent years without a permanent home and had to borrow space. Now Maui OnStage is the company describing a search for alternate venues. In the meantime, the center of downtown performance is shifting a few blocks east, toward Main Street and the Church and Vineyard corner. The hālau's plaza and second-floor event space will face that corner once they open.
Before any of that, there is November 6. The garage, the hālau site and Market Street all come into play that night, and the Made in Maui County Festival opens across town the same afternoon.
The garage carries more of First Friday than parking. At recent editions, DJ Z has played on the garage level while local vendors set up there, and the Market Street stage has run two sets a night. The organizers haven't posted the November lineup on the Wailuku First Friday site yet. Check there in the days before. Once the hālau's courtyard and plaza open beside the garage, you'll walk past them on the way from your car to Market Street.
Small rooms count too. Sabado Art Gallery at 38 N. Market St. has used First Friday nights for exhibitions, including a spring show of work by Philip Sabado's students. The ʻĪao, the Naylor, and the galleries and storefronts between them are close enough to walk on one evening. The coming year will change which of them are open on a given night.
Emerald Club Realty is a family-owned brokerage based in Wailuku. We'll be on Market Street for First Friday and watching the hālau go up at Church and Vineyard with everyone else. If you have questions about life in Central Maui, or about owning a home near a downtown that's changing this quickly, Work with our Maui Ohana.
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