Still Cruise'n
10 years after Norwegian Cruise Lines went all-American with its around-the-Islands cruises, the Pride of America still sails every week, each time at…
Leadership
Attention Passengers: This Form Is Really Important to Hawaii
YOU ARE ENGROSSED IN the latest action movie, noise-canceling headphones in place, halfway through your book chapter or, worst, sleeping. The flight attendant comes down the aisle, interrupting everyone’s mid-flight routine, and says, “Please fill this out.” You get the…
Restaurant Road
RESTAURATEURS SEEM TO lead charmed lives. They pick where they work, set their own hours, create a pleasant atmosphere and run a place where…
Local and Naked
WHEN OAHU’S LAST dairy closed in 2008, Monique Van der Stroom started her own. “I went to college at the University of Arizona in dairy science. It’s what I really wanted to do with my life, so I just figured, if…
New Ways to Measure Prosperity
LAST YEAR, THE TOPIC was growing Hawaii’s economic pie. This year, the annual conference of the Hawaii Economic Association will focus on how to expand other facets of prosperity, such as environmental well-being, sustainability and social quality of life. Everyone…
WATG Dazzles the World for 70 Years
A lot of collaboration takes place around the main work table at WATG’s Honolulu office. From left are Craig Takahata, VP and managing director for Honolulu; Tiffany Lee, associate operations manager; and Brittany Meyers, administrative assistant. Photo:…
Gold Diggers
IT LOOKED LIKE the end of an era. Maui Land & Pineapple shuttered its agricultural operations after 90 years and laid off the few farm workers left out of a workforce that once numbered more than a thousand. In what many…
Broken: Stuck in Permit Purgatory
George Atta, director of the Department of Planning and Permitting and a former principal at the architectural firm Group 70 international, knows just how swamped Honolulu's permitting system is. Hideo Simon can barely contain his frustration. “It took me six…
Talk Story with Scott Barber, President and CEO, Hawaiian Telcom
Barber had been Hawaiian Telcom’s COO since 2013. He was promoted this June when former CEO Eric Yeaman left for First Hawaiian Bank. Your career began more than three decades ago as a phone company lineworker in California. What was…
LocalKineBiz: Pae Thai
“I WANT TO make people feel at home here,” says Supreecha Sangthong, nicknamed “Dang,” co-owner of Pae Thai Restaurant in Makiki. “I’m happy to cook for them, and I want to personally make sure they’re satisfied. I’m not so concerned about…
Full Disclosure: This Is a Bragging Story
WE THINK WE DO good work at Hawaii Business magazine, but it’s always reassuring when we receive affirmation from others – whether our readers or peers. At the end of June, we got a lot of reassurance. In the annual statewide…
Cashing In: Marcus Mariota
HAWAII'S MARCUS MARIOTA signed a four-year, $24,213,976 contract with the NFL’s Tennessee Titans. The amount is fully guaranteed. The deal includes a $15,870,164 signing bonus. His average annual salary will be $6,053,494. In 2015, his base salary will be $435,000 with…
Hawaii's Dreamers
Muscular and athletic, Shingai Masiya was certainly college football material. He hoped for that coming out of high school, but the dream died. While he had come into the U.S. legally at age 13 with his family from Zimbabwe, a…
Talk Story: Amy Kunz, Chief Financial Officer and Senior Assistant Superintendent, State Department of Education
Kunz oversees a budget of $1.9 billion that pays for a staff of 25,000 and 289 public schools, including charter schools. Q: Energy costs for the schools are one of the largest parts of the annual budget. How are you tackling…
An Epic Match
Noel Nedli is the founder and CEO of Room Service in Paradise, which delivers 50,000 meals annually from 75 Oahu restaurants, employs 45 people and grosses more than $2 million a year. But, back in 1991, Nedli was studying at Windward…
Yes, Locally Owned Has a Future
It feels like offshore-owned companies are taking over Hawaii, but the reality is their number peaked in 2007. Meanwhile, the number of locally owned companies has grown seven times faster since 1995. The same forces that ate so many local…
Travelin’ Music
KELLI CRUZ IS a “doer.” She learned early on how to build things from her father, who was a carpenter, and create Hawaiian music from her mother, who was a hula dancer. “When I was 18, I picked up a guitar…
Talk Story: Randy Iwase, Public Utility Commission Chair
G ov. David Ige surprised many when he appointed Iwase to replace Hermina Morita at the PUC. Clearly, the former city councilman, state senator, deputy attorney general and chair of the state Tax Revenue Commission has administrative and political chops,…
Did You Know: Size Matters
The Hawaii Community Development Authority, the agency that oversees development in Kakaako and a few other places on Oahu, runs its shop with a mountain of rules and regulations, as you might expect. Whether you agree with HCDA’s rules or…
Multimedia Innovator
Jay Fidell didn’t set out to be a journalist. The founder of the ThinkTech Hawaii arrived here from New York in 1965 as a Coast Guard lawyer and military judge. “It was the time of Vietnam, and war was in…
How Much Will it Cost Us in the End?
"For one thing,” he says, “we’re not over budget at all, at this point. We’re estimating that, because construction costs are escalating so quickly in the current year, that next year, when we’re signing the remaining construction contracts, we’re going…
Something Old, New, Borrowed & Green
WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU COMBINE ELEMENTS OF THE 19TH, 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES? Start with the U.S. government’s oldest scientific agency, with roots stretching back to the early 1800s; add historic Ford Island aircraft hangars that survived the…
Good Neighbors: Ulrich Krauer
Ulrich Krauer has dedicated the past 40 years of his life to the hospitality industry – in Hawaii and around the world – but what he and his staff at the…
This House Offers Hope
The Rev. Samuel Cox doesn’t talk like a preacher when he speaks about the odds of a woman starting a new life after prison. He calls it like a gambler: “The dice are loaded,” and not in the woman’s favor.…