What Would You Do With $40 Million? Helicopter, Diamonds, or a Keawakapu Sanctuary?

What does $40,000,000 actually get you today?

At this level of wealth, your options are staggering. You could buy a brand-new, VIP Airbus helicopter – an engineering marvel that aggressively burns cash every second it sits in a hangar. You could get a nearly 19-carat fancy diamond like the “Pink Legacy” that sold at Christie’s for more than $50 million- a loose stone you buy now and might set someday, although you’d probably leave it locked away in a silent bank vault. Or you could buy a Warhol! His silver “Double Elvis” sold for over $37 million at Sotheby’s -this single canvas arrives by climate-controlled truck with a security escort and an insurance rider thick enough to stump Claude. You definitely wouldn’t want to hang the Warhol in your Maui Beach house where sand and trade winds are welcome! 

Or you could buy air. For $40,000,000 in Manhattan, you’re looking at 5,000 square feet at the top of Billionaires’ Row – a stack of rooms with a painfully high monthly HOA. In Dubai, a full-floor, five-bedroom penthouse on Jumeirah Bay Island—11,655 square feet with 360-degree views—is currently listed at $40,705,000, Forbes Global Property listing here. Both are legacy trophy properties. Neither one has a thatched roof and allows you to walk barefoot out your back door and onto the sand.

But you do not have to choose between a life of luxury and island stewardship.

Here is the game changer: $35M anchors the ultimate Keawakapu sanctuary then consider a $5M donation which permanently protects the wild places that make this island worth anchoring to.

One acre of private paradise. Open space and endangered wild birds protected beyond your fence line. That is what I’d do with $40M.

When you anchor $35M into the Keawakapu property, you are acquiring the island life style – an oceanfront sanctuary, with mango, coconut and banana trees – a place to gather with your ‘ohana. A unique home where your backyard opens up to sunsets and panoramic views of Lanai, Molokini, and Kaho’olawe.

Instead of a noisy flight deck—or a curtain wall thirty stories above a city street—you get a custom home designed by Ike Kligerman to enjoy the indoor-outdoor living, a private resort-style pool, and an upstairs terrace to watch humpback whales breach in the winter seasons.

The moment you close on this landmark estate on Keawakapu, you could decide to become a steward of the land. By pairing the $35,000,000 acquisition of this home with a $5,000,000 donation to the Hawaiʻi Land Trust (HILT), you transition from an outside investor to a guardian of conservation land.

While you enjoy the world-class dining, golf courses, and sunsets in the ocean, that $5M can simultaneously protect of acres of Hawaiian wilderness, native forests, and cultural landscapes.

Your Keawakapu estate becomes the command center for your family’s global impact.

A helicopter will eventually sit in a scrapyard. A diamond stays hidden in a safe. A Manhattan or Dubai penthouse, however coveted, is still one unit among hundreds stacked in a tower you don’t own. But a Keawakapu sanctuary, paired with a donation and hopefully some volunteer time at HILT? That is meaningful. Below is a photo of Hawea Point – conservation land stewarded by HILT, home to the endangered Hawaiian ‘Ua’u Kani birds that nest in the ground.  

Maui lands and birds will thank you for your $5M in lasting conservation impact. For more information on how to donate to HILT, contact me or view their website.

More information on the Keawakapu Sanctuary here. See the full listing detail here.

Contact Blake Hill or Anna Severson for showings. Thank you for reading!

The $5M donation is a suggestion for what a $40 million budget could do. It is separate from the purchase of 3234 South Kihei Road, Maui 96753, and Hawaiʻi Land Trust is not affiliated with this listing.