Name: Mike Hall Job: Mixologist Experience: Two years Start: When Hall moved from Maryland in 1999 to attend Hawaii Pacific University, he did what many college students do: He worked at a restaurant. It wasn’t until he got a job at Brasserie Du Vin in Chinatown and worked with mixologist Josh Perez that he realized bartending could be a…
Executive Director, Pacific Resource Partnership PRP, a unique partnership between Hawaii’s top contractors and the Hawaii Carpenters Union, is a powerful supporter of rail. White talks about integrated communities and how they will help guide Oahu’s development. What are integrated communities? Peter Calthorpe is one of the nation’s pre-eminent planners and evangelists of transit-oriented development. In 2011, we hired…
1947 Roy and Estelle Kelley build their first hotel: the five-story, 50-room Islander Hotel on Seaside Avenue, the first in Waikiki to cater to middle-income travelers and families. Four more hotels follow over 12 years. The 1965 Honolulu Advertiser piece above notes, “the Outrigger is halfway toward its 16-story goal.” The Outrigger Waikiki was the first Kelley hotel to carry…
Just 25 years ago, Outrigger did not have a hotel outside of Waikiki. Today, it owns or operates 31 properties spread across the Hawaiian Islands and another 11 as far away as Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Quite an achievement for a privately held company that’s still proudly based in Hawaii. But wait, those numbers are not the end of…
Shrimp is the most popular seafood in the U.S. – the average American eats more than four pounds a year. But nearly all of it is imported and most of that farm-raised in Asia and South America. Those are well-known facts. What’s less well-known is that most of the world’s farmed shrimp can trace their genes back to Hawaii. Here’s…
Chances are good that when additions or a major overhaul are made to a Hawaii home, the goal is to accommodate multiple generations on the same property. Sometimes the reasons are economic: Grown children with their own kids can’t afford a big enough home, so they move in with Mom and Dad. Sometimes quality of life drives the decision: The…
As a journalist, I get more chances to meet our leading politicians than the average citizen. But Hawaii is such an intimate and casual place you don’t always need special access to talk story with the powerful – or someone who might soon become the most powerful person in the state. I first met David Ige in a typical gathering…
Question: How do I attract travelers from Asia to my business? Answer: First acknowledge that Japan, China and Korea are culturally unique. Understanding this key principle will enable you to create tailored campaigns that are relevant to the consumer you are trying to attract. Recognize diverse consumer behaviors: Learn individual cultural nuances and adapt your business accordingly. Some travelers,…
Military and Businessman HandshakeWhen veterans retire or separate from the military, they leave more than their jobs, they leave a way of life. What makes the transition tougher is their skills sometimes don’t seem to translate easily to civilian jobs or running businesses. To counter those problems, the Department of Defense and the U.S. Small Business Administration last year launched…
Eloquence, confidence and command of material are important characteristics of a competent presenter. But to become a master presenter, you’ll need to pay more mind to an intangible factor that most executives overlook when preparing for public speaking: their image. Beauty expert Paul Brown gives tips on how executives can look – and feel – their best during public presentations….
The keys to getting a promotion are not what you say when asking for one, but what you do to make the promotion more likely. Some of those actions may be obvious, but others might surprise you. Earning a promotion can take years of groundwork, so start right away. What you do within your organization is crucial, but Signe Godfrey,…
What’s it Worth? $25,000+ Oahu boasts 473 buildings that are 10 stories or higher, according to the SkyscraperPage database, with more on the way. Building all those high-rises took brains, sweat and lots of tall cranes. Renting a tower crane starts at $25,000 and then goes up, depending on factors such as lift capacity, height and the duration of…
For a couple of years in the late 1990s, Robert Iopa worked in Kuala Lumpur for WATG, the Honolulu-based, international architecture firm specializing in resort development. For the young architect from Hawaii, it was an exciting time, but doing this work in Malaysia struck him as ironic. “I was learning about other people’s cultures,” he says, “with the hope of…
Problem: Doctors didn’t have a reliable, noninvasive method to measure changes to the water in a patient’s lungs – an important factor in the early detection of heart failure. Heart failure affects an estimated 5.1 million people in the U.S. and costs roughly $32 billion a year for healthcare and missed work, according to the Centers for Disease Control and…
Erica Shin graduated from Kalani High School in May with an ambitious plan that carried a huge price tag: biology major and pre-med student at UH-Manoa, before attending the John A. Burns School of Medicine. That’s why she was surprised and thrilled to learn she won this year’s $10,000 Aiko Takitani scholarship. “Medical school is extremely expensive!” she says. “The…
It was a great party at the 4-acre oceanfront estate in Olowalu, about four miles south of Lahaina: The music was lively, the neighbors enjoyed it and money was raised for a good cause. The owners weren’t there, but they were pleased because the house sold within the month. It may seem like an unusual way to help sell a…
Each of these 10 vacant buildings has problems, whether termites, fumes, asbestos or just a lack of tenants. Some owners are moving forward with new plans, while others are still trying to figure out what to do. While new buildings are being built all the time in Hawaii, some large commercial and government properties have sat unused for years or…
Volunteering Is Fun For Ashley Gadow, volunteering is often a family affair, as she tries to include her 11-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter. “They’re water babies,” Gadow says, so one of their favorite causes is Malama Maunalua, which aims to restore and protect Hawaii Kai’s Maunalua Bay. Gadow, 31, says she has been an active volunteer since high school, and…
The Diamond Head Theatre is celebrating its 100th anniversary this season, but there was a time when it seemed like it might end its run right around its 80th anniversary. A few bad decisions – including paying actors more than it could afford and producing some risqué shows that offended patrons – had put the nation’s third-oldest continuously operating community…
No matter which lens you use, Kakaako is where the transformations in Hawaii’s 21st-century life are most clear. The demographic lens: You already know there are more older people today, while young people are delaying both marriage and their families, and then having fewer children than their boomer parents. Many of those people – young, old and in between –…