2023 CEO of the Year: Ken Sakurai of Coastal Construction

If Ken Sakurai had his way, this article wouldn’t be about him at all.

Commercial Plumbing President Randy Hiraki describes Sakurai’s initial reaction when he heard he had been chosen as CEO of the Year. “I happened to be having lunch with him when he got the call. The first thing he said was, ‘Why me? There are plenty of other guys who are more deserving.’ ”

Hiraki disagrees because he thinks Sakurai is very deserving.

“Ken is just so humble and low profile that I bet a lot of people have never even heard of him. But when you learn how many homes his company has built for the people of Hawai‘i, you’ll realize that number is astronomical,” Hiraki says.

Photo: Aaron Yoshino

Sakurai’s company, Coastal Construction, has built close to 33,000 single-family and multifamily dwellings since he joined it in 1973. Working with developers Castle & Cooke, Haseko and Forest City Hawaii, and nonprofits such as aio Foundation and HomeAid Hawaii, Coastal Construction’s projects have included affordable units, military housing and housing for veterans, and even plantation-style villages and respite centers for the homeless.

In a state where one of the biggest problems is a lack of accessible housing, Sakurai’s leadership has accomplished a great deal.

“When I think back to all the homes that Coastal has built, I visualize all of the families and children’s lives that they’ve affected. His work has helped make Hawai‘i more livable for multiple generations,” says aio founder and Chairman Duane Kurisu. “Ken’s the most under-the-radar person in Hawai‘i who’s made significant contributions to our past and our future.”

Says Chairman of the Board, President and CEO of First Hawaiian Bank Bob Harrison: “He’s the quiet guy. He never wants the limelight. Yet he’s been a success story for almost 50 years, starting with nothing, then creating an important business through perseverance and hard work. There simply aren’t enough Ken Sakurais in the world and I can’t think of a better person to receive this honor.”

But don’t let that humility make you think he doesn’t know what he’s doing, says Tim Takaezu, regional sales manager for Foundation Building Materials. “When it comes to business, he can also be a tough guy to deal with and not a pushover by any means. If you get on the wrong side of him, you’re going to hear about it.”

In person, Sakurai is warm, funny, gentlemanly and a wonderful storyteller. He’s sometimes called “The Silver Fox” due to his hair color, twinkling eyes and still-elegant physique at the age of 84. From the moment I step into Coastal’s headquarters in Kalihi, it’s clear how beloved he is as his employees good-naturedly tease him about cleaning up his messy desk for our interview.

It’s also clear from how he decorates his office that he is, first and foremost, a local boy and family man. His walls are filled with photos of his late wife, two children, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Near his desk is a black-and-white photo of him in his younger days, holding an eight-and-a-half foot Pacific blue marlin he caught on a fishing trip in Keauhou Bay.

He has an elephant’s memory for not only the specifics of each work project, but also the harmless hijinks he participated in as a “rascally” boy growing up in Honolulu.

When Hawaii Business Magazine Editor and Executive Publisher Steve Petranik called him to say he was chosen as CEO of the Year, Sakurai tried to turn down the honor. When I ask him about that, Sakurai is every bit as humble as his reputation. “I don’t think of myself as being in the same league as the great CEOs,” he says. “I just think of myself as a businessman who likes to build houses.”

A Soul for Building Communities

That passion for building houses can be traced back to the late 1950s, when he got his start building roads for Henry J. Kaiser. Back then, he recalls, Hawai‘i Kai was just kiawe trees and haole koa bushes, yet Kaiser had a vision to build a six-lane thoroughfare. Sakurai remembers sitting down for lunch one day, looking out on Kalama Valley. “I thought, there’s nothing here. Who in the world will ever buy a house in Hawai‘i Kai? Mr. Kaiser, with all his wealth, must have completely lost his marbles.

“Never could I have imagined back then that it could become a community. And never could I have imagined that I’d one day become a resident of that community,” Sakurai says.

His work for Kaiser was only the first step, however.

“One day we were doing some roadwork for the community of Waipi‘o. I remember being covered in red dirt. Man, it was all up in my nose and ears and everywhere else it could get into. And I thought, OK, it’s time to figure out something else to do.”

By 1967, he was working on military residences at what is now known as Wheeler Army Airfield and by 1968, Jack Dubey approached him to work on the framing and drywall for 18 houses in the brand-new community of Mililani. The two formed Sunset Builders, where Sakurai credits Dubey for mentoring him on the administrative side of the business. By 1973, they merged with a company called Coastal Construction, and in 1980, he bought out his partner.

“It’s been 50 years in the making of Coastal. And it’s been one hell of a ride,” Sakurai says.

To work with someone like Sakurai who has deep experience as a skilled carpenter while also having a head for business is rare, says Michael Fujimoto, executive chairman of HPM Building Supply. “Not all contractors have that kind of insight and perspective. A lot of that is because Ken started off running the plates and carrying lumber on the job site. He was a framer who learned in the field and was very good at it, very fast at it. But he was also intelligent and able to take the next step to operating a company. It’s a huge leap from being good at building to someone who can manage customers and people, estimate the cost of the project, and be able to bid in a way that’s competitive but at the same time won’t run you bankrupt.”

That combination of experience and business savvy has led to long-term working relationships with developers, including ties with Castle & Cooke that go all the way back to 1968.

“He’s absolutely one of the best CEOs in the state. We bid out our work so it’s not that we only had one contractor. But he’d always win,” says Harry Saunders, president of Castle & Cooke Hawai‘i. Saunders estimates that Coastal has helped Castle & Cooke build at least 20,000 homes across multiple projects.

The 2023 CEO of the Year celebration honoring Ken Sakurai will take place on Wednesday, December 6, 2023. For more details click here.

“In Hawai‘i, your word is your bond, and when Ken gives his word, it sticks. It happens. I consider him our A team and he stands behind his work. He’s right there to back it up.”

But for Sakurai, building homes is not just a profession. It’s also a calling that comes with a responsibility. “My grandpa always stresses to us the importance of volunteering,” says Kai Masutani, safety coordinator at Coastal Construction. “Building houses is our specialty, he said. Let’s use this experience to give back to families who are struggling.”

Partnering with aio Foundation and other volunteers, Coastal helped construct over 150 homes in Kahauiki Village, located off Nimitz Highway near Ke‘ehi Lagoon. The process involved reusing emergency homes that had been used in Japan after the Fukushima tsunami, then shipped to Hawai‘i. The former paintball site was transformed into a plantation-style community for over 600 homeless adults and children.

“When we first met,” Kurisu says, “we hit it off right away because I could feel his passion for building shelters and communities. And in the process of talking through the vision and the execution, I could feel his soul was in alignment with the vision. We became an assembly of like-minded contractors. Kahauiki Village became a reality because of that trust.”

Without seeking recognition or fanfare, Sakurai has also volunteered his company’s time and resources for several other projects, including a medical respite center in Honolulu that provides homeless patients being discharged from the hospital with a safe place to heal and recover.

“The good ones like Ken are quiet. They are not breaking their arm to pat themselves on the back. We ask him for help and he’s there,” says Saunders, who is among the leadership of HomeAid Hawaii, which helped bring together the resources needed to build the Pūlama Ola medical respite kauhale. “All of us in this industry of building communities want a Ken Sakurai to work with us.”

Unafraid to Leave His Comfort Zone

At the start of the 1990s, a federal court ruling closed most of the woods in the U.S. Northwest to logging in order to preserve the habitat of the endangered northern spotted owl. The ensuing lumber shortage was a turning point for Sakurai: Would he continue working as he always had under the new constraints, or pivot to something new?

He pivoted. In 1993, he built 212 homes with Castle & Cooke using a material that virtually no carpenters in the state had worked with before: light-gauge steel.

In theory, the transition to this metal makes sense in a place like Hawai‘i, as it can deter termites and fire and can maintain its shape, unlike wood, which tends to get twisted and bent as it ages. The problem, however, was that there were no handbooks or expert resources back then on how to use it for framing.

“Wood was in our comfort zone. We were proficient in it, and already had jobs lined up,” says Coastal Construction VP Les Masutani. “For a tradesman, working with wood versus metal requires almost opposite kinds of techniques. Very different tools and hand movements. It took a lot of time for woodworkers to adjust. It was really frustrating.”

Sakurai is more blunt. “It was traumatic. We lost nothing but money then – a total of $568,000,” he says, adding that the figure is forever imprinted in his memory. “All our lead superintendents and foremen thought I had lost my marbles trying to transition from wood to light-gauge steel.”

Sakurai, right, joins estimator and project coordinator Jon Rapisura at a building site. | Photo: Aaron Yoshino

But as difficult as that transition was, Coastal’s work with those first couple of hundred homes put it and Sakurai at the forefront of a building trend that would only grow.

“Coastal was where everybody learned metal framing,” says Ron Taketa, executive secretary-treasurer of the Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters. “A lot of new contractors today have supervisors who learned at Coastal. Because Ken is responsible for countless numbers of our union people getting trained, he’s recognized as an icon among residential contractors.”

The desire to learn from Coastal Construction even extended beyond the state. “We had suppliers coming out here, guys trying to figure out what tools would work,” says Masutani. “They would come to our site, interview us. Everybody had ideas on how to make it production based, but we here in Hawai‘i were among the front-runners in figuring it out.”

Sakurai acknowledges that, even with the lumber shortage, it would have been much easier to stick with what the company knew. But he has no regrets, even if the losses he sustained still haunt him.

“I know it was the right decision because as of today, we’ve built nearly 17,000 homes in light-gauge steel. And it was all because we let ourselves go through a process of trial and error, not giving up even when things were at their toughest.”

Hope Even Through Hardship

A third-generation descendant of Japanese immigrants, Sakurai remembers how little his family had growing up. “My father was a cabinetmaker with a very meager income. We ate banana sandwiches. And a lot of avocado sandwiches, which I ate so much that I don’t like it today. I also remember mayonnaise sandwiches with pepper. If we were really, really lucky, there might be some cold cuts.”

And then came Nancy, the girl of his dreams.

“There was this waitress in a restaurant. And I thought, wow, what an attractive girl. But I couldn’t afford anything there. Coffee was the cheapest thing, only 10 cents. So that’s all I’d order. I would drink coffee and talk story with her until I finally asked her out,” he says, a wistful smile on his face.

“The first morning we were married, she made me coffee. And I finally had to tell her, I don’t like coffee. In fact, I hate coffee, but it was the only way to spend time with her. After that, she never made coffee for me ever again,” he says, laughing.

He describes many times in his life when his determination was put to the test, especially in 1982. That year started off with a concrete strike that shut down the industry. To keep the company going and others employed through the strike, he didn’t withdraw any income for himself. Later that year, his wife suffered a major brain aneurysm. She was hospitalized for 88 days, including over a month in intensive care.

“I’ve survived six recessions but that was the most difficult time of my whole life,” he says, recalling how he flew weekly between Los Angeles, where his wife was hospitalized, and Hawai‘i, where he struggled to keep his business afloat.

And when his wife returned home, she needed help with daily tasks. “At night she would get up, and because I didn’t want her to get hurt, I tied a bathrobe belt to her and around my wrist. So when she got up, I’d wake up and get up too. There were lots of accidents that I would clean up. But it’s not because I had to do it, it’s because I wanted to do it.”

Nancy survived another 29 years after the aneurysm. While never fully recovering, she did get 75% there and, says Sakurai, lived a good life for nearly three more decades. “She helped me understand how much strength and determination there can be in the human body. She was a warrior,” he says.

Sakurai’s commitment to the well-being of others extends to his employees. Denise Maihui, longtime secretary at Coastal Construction, describes a time when Coastal was struggling, leading to talk of an acquisition by another company.

“Ken tried to hold it in, but you could see how hurt he was, feeling like he was letting us down,” she recalls. “But he told us not to worry. The deal was that the new owners would have to hire all of us, so nobody would be out of a job. We were so touched because we knew he could just get out. But instead, he was most concerned about making sure we’d all still keep our jobs.”

The 2023 CEO of the Year celebration honoring Ken Sakurai will take place on Wednesday, December 6, 2023. For more details click here.

Yet his employees couldn’t imagine a Coastal Construction without Sakurai. “I told him if he’s not here, then I quit. All of a sudden, everyone said I quit too. He looked at us and said, ‘OK, should we stick it out and see if we make it?’ And we did. And here we are today, stronger than ever,” says Maihui.

As proud as Sakurai is of the homes he has built, he is just as thrilled with how long he’s been able to keep people employed. He’s seen employees get married and have children, and was there when those same employees sent their kids off to college and, later, became grandparents.

“We have a gentleman who has been with us for 46 years. Forty-six years, can you believe it?” Sakurai says. “He told me he’s at an age where he thinks he’s supposed to retire. But he actually doesn’t want to. And I told him he doesn’t have to. He looked surprised, saying really? I can stay? And I said of course! Why not just keep going, like me?”

Chad Karasaki, chairman, CEO and resident managing director at Aon Risk Services, says Sakurai’s deep commitment to his team sets him apart from other CEOs.

“As the owner, the buck stops with him operationally and financially. He risks his personal wealth every time they take on big projects. But he does so unquestionably, unabashedly. There were so many times he could have just said, I’ll just sell the place and ride off into the sunset. But instead, he took some great losses solely to keep his men working. That is how Ken Sakurai is. He has the heart of a lion,” Karasaki says.

He Leads by Example

When talking about the biggest accomplishment of his life, Sakurai points to the wall of photos in front of his desk. “Because of my lack of education, I made it a point to send all of my five grandchildren to college. I’m so proud of that, because all five have graduated, two have gotten their master’s, and one is a veterinarian.”

Along with son-in-law Les Masutani, the company’s VP, two of his grandchildren, Kaz and Kai Masutani, have made their careers at Coastal. In fact, Kaz and Les were having lunch with Sakurai when he got the call informing him he had been chosen as CEO of the Year.

Sakurai, seated next to his wife, Nancy, now deceased, and five grandchildren. Two now work at Coastal Construction. | Photo: courtesy of Ken Sakurai

“I told Ken, this is not a coincidence – this is meant to be,” says Hiraki, the Commercial Plumbing president, who was there as well. “What makes the honor even greater is that we have all three generations of your family working at Coastal here to witness what you’ve accomplished. And you know that with them in leadership, your company will carry on even when you’re gone.”

But just because they are family doesn’t mean they haven’t earned their positions within the company. When it came to his successor, Les Masutani, Sakurai required that he learn the business, from the ground up.

“I started in the field as a laborer. I must have worked at least 10-12 years in the field. To me that was the best training I could ever have had,” says Masutani. “When you’re in the field, there is a daily sense of accomplishment. You get to respect the guys working in the trench and it taught me good work ethics. That definitely helps (me) see the whole picture.”

Kai Masutani, who is Kaz’s sister and Les’ daughter, confirms that her grandfather hasn’t shown any favoritism to her in her 10 years at Coastal. “When I told him I wanted to work for him, I thought he was going to take it easy on me. But he had me go out with the boys with my pouch on and start putting in nails. I was just another carpenter,” she says. “But because of that, I got to build a working relationship with them and learn what needs to be done to work safely. That helps me today in my role as safety coordinator. It was a good way to earn respect instead of just being Ken’s granddaughter.”

Kaz Masutani, who works on the administration side, says that so much of what she’s learned has come from observing her grandfather.

“He’s in his 80s, but he still shows up to meetings and site visits,” she says. “And on top of that, he takes care of employees, treats them well, buys them lunch every day, is interested in their kids, checks in when they’re sick, and asks about the challenges they are dealing with. And then he’s always encouraging us to give back when we can, to volunteer time or money or food and clothing to Maui, for example.

“He truly leads by example.”

Values Character Above All Else

On Sakurai’s desk is an award placard featuring a golf ball.

“After 84 years, I finally made a holein-one,” he says. “I was so happy, I actually jumped for joy.” But like other things he is proud of, it is significant in ways that aren’t really about winning or being recognized. Golf, for Sakurai, is not a competition. It is a way to build trust.

“Me playing golf with him, no matter how bad I was, it was important to him,” says Fujimoto, of HPM Building Supply. “You have that time together, you get to cheer for each other or commiserate. It’s an opportunity to get to know a person outside of work. It allows you to see them very clearly in terms of how they conduct themselves on the golf course.

“And Ken’s character is this: He never brags or boasts. He never gets angry. Never places blame on anyone or anything else. And he’s always encouraging, always positive. Spending time together on the golf course has added a whole other dimension to our business relationship.”

For Sakurai, spending time on a golf course helps build trust and business relationships. He hit his first hole-in-one at age 84. | Photo: courtesy of Ken Sakurai

Fujimoto’s son, HPM President and CEO Jason Fujimoto, says mutual respect, fostered over time, is vital to being as successful in business as Sakurai has been.

“We’re in an island environment and everything goes back to honor, reputation and what you’re doing for the long haul. All of that underscores the importance of community – we are all in it together. You just can’t survive doing things by yourself. That is why it has been so important over the decades to know that Ken is a man of his word, someone who values relationships above all.”

Stanford Carr, president of Stanford Carr Development, has known Sakurai for 45 years, ever since Carr was a 16-year-old installing vinyl carpeting. He agrees there is something traditional and deeply important about Sakurai’s values.

Sakurai on a fishing
trip on the Kasilof
River in Alaska. | Photo: courtesy of Ken Sakurai

“He can be the samurai tough guy but he’s also got a heart of gold. He gives younger people opportunities, which he did with me. But most importantly, he’s a straight shooter, a tell-it-like-it-is guy. His word is his honor. Old-school. And unfortunately, they just don’t make them like that anymore.”

When asked about the qualities that make a great CEO, Sakurai doesn’t mention profit or accomplishments or any of the typical metrics that define modern success. Rather, he talks about character. “There are two golden rules I live by. Treat anybody the way you want to be treated and second, you must have class,” he says. “And what is class? It’s having consideration for others.”

“It’s not what he says, it’s what he does,” says Takaezu, regional sales manager for Foundation Building Materials. “Say we go out to dinner, and I’m catching an Uber back to my house. He’ll always insist on driving me home, even if I’m going way in the opposite direction. He says that if I don’t get in the car, he’ll never buy from us anymore. He’s my customer, but what customer goes out of their way to do that?”

With our visit over, I get ready to leave his Kalihi headquarters – and he waits with me outside until my ride arrives. Later on, he calls to see that I got to my hotel without incident and a few days later, makes sure I’ve flown home safely to Kona. As so many have expressed, Sakurai is an exceptional CEO not only because of the sheer number of homes he has created in Hawai‘i, but because of the quiet, under-the-radar things he does to care for his people.

“Most people leave work around 5 o’clock, but I sometimes stay to catch up on things because it’s quiet,” says Maihui, the secretary at Coastal Construction. “And he always stays with me until I’m done. It’s important to him to be the last one there, the one who sees everyone off, the one that makes sure we’re all headed safely home before locking up after us.”

For Kurisu, the aio founder and chairman, Sakurai represents the very best of homegrown, deeply-rooted local values. “He comes from a time and place where things like trust, responsibility, character and generosity were most important, more so than any amount of money you could make. We grew up that way, and it was like that back then. And it could still be that way again in the future. Ken represents that hope.”

The 2023 CEO of the Year celebration honoring Ken Sakurai will take place on Wednesday, December 6, 2023. For more details click here.