Local Trees Can Help Solve Our Housing Crisis
A UH graduate’s relentless three-year quest proves even invasive trees can be turned into useful, even beautiful, dwellings.
Community & Economy
Hawaii Island Business Report 2018
The OLD traditions, the NEW ideas Aloha and welcome from the Hawaii Island Chamber of Commerce. Based in Hilo, the chamber’s membership includes nearly 300 businesses, non-profit organizations and professionals who support the chamber’s mission. For 120 years the…
Maui Business Report
Table of Contents A message from the Maui Economic Development Board: Seeding Innovation Growing Pains for Maui’s Hot Economy Unemployment is near zero, but business leaders want to see more high-skilled, high-wage jobs Renewable Projects Light Up Economy Maui’s first…
20 for the Next 20 Community Project: Housing for the Homeless
There were dozens of volunteers on this December morning at Kahauiki Village, an 11.3-acre development that will eventually provide long-term housing to 153 homeless families on Oahu. Though there was excitement in the air, it was surprisingly quiet for a…
West Oahu Magazine 2018
Seeds of Success West Oahu Students Cultivate A Community To Learn, Live and Thrive Table of Contents Welcome Letter from the President Introduction West Oahu's Big Promise Healthcare Home is Where the Health is Hospitality Elliot Mills On Your Mark.…
20 for the Next 20 Community Project: Giving Back
Despite being sandwiched between a busy road and a thoroughly non-native hillside, Oahu’s Hamakua Marsh is home to some of Hawaii’s rarest birds, including the red-plated Hawaiian moorhen, or alae ula, which is federally listed as endangered. [caption id="attachment_19723" align="alignright"…
Made in Hawaii
Iolani Sportswear president Lloyd Kawakami remembers when aloha shirts were only made in Hawaii. Today, they are produced cheaply in Asia or sold under labels such as Tommy Bahama, which have no connection to the Islands. That competition has put…
From the Managing Editor: The World Is an Island
LIKE MOST PEOPLE, I think about money often. Not about what I can buy with it – though occasionally daydreaming about a shopping trip to Tokyo never hurt anybody. No, my preoccupation is with how money works and how it…
Hawaii: Who We Are
Our Sources Reliable data collection on a big scale takes time. The most recent statistics available for this report are primarily from 2014, sometimes earlier or from 2015. Our information came from many sources; here are abbreviations and acronyms we…
Japan is a Large Growth Market for Hawaii Entrepreneurs
Eric Rose can’t forget the day a year and a half ago when a group of Japanese businessmen walked into Morning Glass, his trendy coffee house in Manoa, and suggested taking the concept to Japan. “They came in out of…
Surfing Through Hawaii's Past
Landmarks are common sources of surf-spot names, so many have been named after businesses on shore or businesspeople who owned beachfront homes. The following examples and the stories behind the names are from John Clark’s book “Hawaii Place Names: Shores,…
Middle School Miracles
A groundbreaking program – based on solid data about student performance – is leading to remarkable changes in middle-school students around the state. Let’s start with three students at Waimea Middle Public Conversion Charter School. One eighth grade boy was…
Worth Considering: Building with Shipping Containers
Last November, the Hale Mauliola Housing Navigation Service Center opened on Sand Island. It made national news for creating homeless shelters from retrofitted shipping containers. Some people were appalled, others applauded the frugality and portability of the design. In Nevada,…
Yes, We Can Solve Hawaii's Housing Crisis
To solve homelessness, we need to build lots more affordable housing, but Hawaii has failed to do that for decades. Three men with very different visions are trying to fix that. It’s an improbable place to build affordable housing:…
Hawaii: Headquarters of the Future
Richard Kaipo Lum has had plenty of clients that you’ve heard of. To name a few: the European Commission, the city of Stockholm, the governments of Canada, the United Kingdom and Singapore, along with multinationals like PepsiCo, IBM and others…
Pele’s Protege
Friday, 12:22 pm Bishop Museum, Kalihi Photo by Kent Nishimura As part of a show at Bishop Museum, senior science educator Hadley Andersen melts basalt cinder in a brass furnace that reaches over 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. She’s wearing a fire…
Living Paycheck to Paycheck in Paradise
Hawaii’s homeless population includes thousands of working people who suffered a financial crisis and lost their place to live. Tens of thousands of others scrape by with jobs that pay little more than minimum wage, but are possibly one or…
See Sharks in a Whole New Light
Steve Jordan says sharks are often misunderstood. “Sharks are not the big, mean monsters they’re made out to be,” says Jordan, the owner and CEO of Hawaii Shark Encounters. His company’s two-hour tours teach customers about shark species and ecosystems,…
Wasted
We may buy that clamshell of beautiful, ripe strawberries with the best of intentions – pancakes! cobbler! fruit salad! – but when the end of the week comes and they’re getting soft and fuzzy in the back of the produce drawer,…
The End of Tipping?
Danny Meyer, one of New York’s most respected restaurateurs, plans to eliminate tipping and raise menu prices by a commensurate amount in his 13 restaurants. This news, along with Hawaii’s gradually increasing minimum wage, which is now $8.50 an hour…
Spot a Different Kind of Visitor
It’s not just tourists who flock to Hawaii in the winter: Humpback whales also come in droves and are especially visible from December through March. The Pailolo Channel between Maui and Molokai is the most popular place to view them, but you…
Armchair Travel, Hawaiian Style
A young Japanese couple experiences a dream Hawaii vacation. They start the day riding horses along a dusty mountain trail at Kualoa Ranch. Then they cruise down Kalakaua Avenue in a convertible, lounge on Waikiki Beach and end the day parasailing.…
The Business of Ahhh
For an hour each month for the past four years, Shelley Umeda has put her face in the hands of aesthetician Susan Snyder, who steams and massages it, plucks out impurities and skims off a layer of dead cells to…
Lodgers and Tax Dodgers
It was dark and raining when my plane touched down in Honolulu for my mini-vacation, so I used my GPS to guide me to where I would spend the next two nights. But, instead of taking me to Waikiki’s well-lit,…