Author: Dennis Hollier

Trump and Hawaii’s Infrastructure

WASHINGTON - ONE TRILLION DOLLARS. As a candidate, that's how much Donald Trump said he planned to spend, if elected, to fix the country's crumbling infrastructure. This proposal was one of the key policies Trump used to distinguish himself from…

Hawaii On the Hill

It makes sense for the leaders of local small businesses and county governments to fly 4,800 miles every year to visit a hill. That's because when you are on Capitol Hill, there are opportunities all around you. "As of today,"…

Trump’s Effect on Hawaii

Interviewed for this story are the four members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation, all Democrats: Sen. Mazie Hirono Sen. Brian Schatz Rep. Colleen Hanabusa Rep. Tulsi Gabbard FIVE RISKS 1. OBAMACARE (The repeal of Obamacare would) have…

Talk Story: Rick Ching

With his recent promotion to president of one of Hawaii’s biggest locally owned businesses (No. 8 on the 2016 Hawaii Business Top 250), Ching is helping oversee Servco’s dramatic overseas expansion. We ask him about the challenges of operating in…

Honolulu: Late and Last

When you look at Hawaii’s biggest problems, it’s astounding how many are tied to our housing shortage. Nationally, we’re near the top in cost of living, price of housing, homelessness and time spent in traffic. And we’re near the bottom…

You’re Paying More for Everything

Developer Peter Savio says everyone in Hawaii pays more for common items like food because of an unfair system of leasehold land rents. He says the current system does not account for decades of up-and-down land prices and economic conditions,…

Hawaii Architects Make Order Out of Chaos

Three award-winning local architects talk about their roles in society, preserving historical buildings, and the ugliest and best-looking buildings in town. Glenn Mason and Bettina Mehnert were selected in April as fellows in the American Institute of Architecture, one of…

Talk Story: Wes Reber Porter

Photo by David Croxford   Before being hired by Damien this year, Porter was a law professor and ran the highly regarded Litigation Center at Golden Gate University School of Law. Prior to that, he spent a decade as a…

Talk Story: Peter Ho

Even after six years at the helm of the state’s second largest bank, Ho is still a relatively young CEO, at age 50. However, he points out: “There are a lot of miles on the odometer.” We talk to him…

Talk Story: John Y. Gotanda

After nearly three decades as a lawyer and law professor on the Mainland, the former dean of the Villanova University law school comes home to lead HPU. We talk to John Gotanda about what it takes to be a university president,…

Mark Dunkerley of Hawaiian Airlines

Since taking the helm in 2005, just as Hawaiian Airlines was coming out of bankruptcy, Dunkerley has presided over a period of unprecedented growth. With new routes to Japan, Korea, China, Australia and New Zealand, the airline has spent billions…

Talk Story with Eric Gleason

Eric Gleason President, NextEra Energy Hawaii President, NextEra Energy Transmission After a career in investment banking – interrupted by a couple of years backpacking around the world with his wife – Gleason has spent the last six years in the…

Batteries: The Other Half of Hawaii’s Energy Future

Batteries are old. In a sense, the last major development in battery technology was the invention of the lead-acid battery in 1859 by the French physicist Gaston Plante. Earlier batteries had short lives, quickly losing their charge as their electrodes…

Off The Grid

Henk Rogers, Hawaii Business' CEO of the year, does not follow conventions - he ignores or breaks them. Henk Rogers is an unusual choice for Hawaii Business magazine’s CEO of the Year. Past CEOs of the Year have led some…

Ranking Hawaii’s Charities

Charity Navigator has been using the same method to rate the nation’s nonprofits since 2002. In this issue, Hawaii Business looks at the 27 local charities on the list. But it’s worth remembering that any such rating system, though valuable,…

Follow the Money

Dozens of local charities work with homeless people. All have boards of directors and staff. Most have an office and equipment, like a bus or kitchen, to maintain. And almost all face the same need to raise funds and provide…

Who Should Own Hawaiian Electric?

There must be blood in the water. Until last year, when Hawaiian Electric Industries announced its intent to merge with Florida energy giant NextEra, the company seemed like a permanent fixture of the local economy. Only a few zealous renewable-energy…

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…

The Biggest Getting Bigger

The $572 million Ewa extension of Ala Moana Shopping Center, which is scheduled to open on November 12, has been an enormous undertaking. As Francisco Gutierrez, director of development at General Growth Properties, explains, the project will add 330,000 square…

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…

KABOOMERS!

“ABOUT $1.1 BILLION A YEAR IS PAID OUT IN PENSION BENEFITS NOW (TO STATE AND COUNTY WORKERS). IN THE NEXT 10 TO 20 YEARS, THAT’S PROJECTED TO GROW TO ABOUT $2 BILLION A YEAR.” –WESLEY MACHIDA Director, State Department of…

Talk Story with David Ige

David Ige surprised political observers last year by upsetting incumbent Neil Abercrombie in the Democratic primary, then beating Duke Aiona and Mufi Hannemann in the general election to become governor. Senior writer Dennis Hollier asked Ige about successes and controversies…

Learn How to Lead

How do Hawaii’s emerging leaders develop the skills they need to run the state’s top companies, nonprofits and government agencies? They have a lot of options. Here are six of the most important leadership-training programs in Hawaii and a quick…

Inevitable Change

Soon – maybe even by the time you read this article – the state’s largest company, Hawaiian Electric Industries, will begin a radical transformation from the stodgy monopoly we’ve known for 124 years, into a much more nimble and competitive…

Talk Story: Richard Wacker

Richard Wacker didn’t start as a banker. An engineer by training, he spent 20 years in executive positions at General Electric. His first banking job came in 2004, when he left GE to run the troubled Korea Exchange Bank for…

Which NextEra Will Hawaii Get?

Soon after NextEra Energy stirred up debate in the local energy community by announcing plans for a $4.3 billion takeover of Hawaiian Electric Industries, Ted Peck called us to put in his two bits. Like other media outlets in town,…

Talk Story with Mike McCartney

Chief of Staff to Gov. David Ige The former CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority has also been a state senator, executive director of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, director of the state Department of Human Resource Development, CEO of…

What’s Hawaii’s Environment Worth?

The coral reefs of the main Hawaiian Islands are worth $9.7 billion. That’s the finding of a well-known 2002 study by Dutch economists Herman Cesar and Pieter van Beukering. They created an elaborate equation that summed up the various types…

Finding the Signal Amid All the Noise

Even more than most scientists studying climate change, Camilo Mora has an apocalyptic vision of the future. In a controversial paper published this year in the journal Nature, Mora, a biogeography researcher at UH, tries to calculate the date of…

Can Hawaiʻi Feed Itself?

A lot of elements are needed to make Hawaiʻi self-sufficient in food. Here are a few examples of struggles and resiliency that enable more productive local farming and food production.

Talk Story with John White

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…

Translating Development into Hawaiian

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…

Talk Story with Michael Gold

A 40-year veteran at HMSA, Gold has led the local insurance giant since December 2012 as the healthcare industry undergoes a sea change. In a recent op-ed, you wrote that the state should try to close part of the Hawaii…

Talk Story with Chenoa Farnsworth

Since she helped found the VC firm Kolohala Ventures in 2006, Farnsworth has been a linchpin in the startup community in Hawaii. Now wearing multiple hats, she talks about the institutions and personal sacrifices it takes to build an ecosystem…

UH Breakthrough

Four decades after its creation, a University of Hawaii innovation remains the basis for Wi-Fi and mobile-phone transmissions Every time you use Wi-Fi, or send a text message, or share data over an Ethernet network, you can thank scientists at…

Talk Story with Coralie Chun Matayoshi

Coralie Chun Matayoshi, CEO, American Red Cross, Hawaii Chapter & Pacific Islands Region The Eastern Pacific hurricane season begins May 15 and runs through Nov. 30. In this interview, Matayoshi talks about disaster preparedness and the role the Red Cross plays…

Northeast Connection

Sometimes, we’re so used to thinking of Hawaii as an economic and political backwater that we forget the Islands have a key role to play in the Pacific Basin. For example, the Northeast Asia Economic Forum is an international organization…

Hawaii-Born Pill: The Next Wonder Drug?

For centuries, people around the world knew that chewing on the bark of certain willow trees could ease the pain of a toothache or a migraine. By the mid-19th century, scientists in France and Germany had isolated the chemical, salicylic…

How Fish Get From the Sea to Your Plate

Some afternoons, after lunching on a mess of ahi furikake or fried ahi belly at Nico’s, the big fish restaurant down on Pier 38, I like to walk across the street and amble down the docks and survey the ragtag fleet…

Is Hawaiian Telcom’s IPTV Rollout a Game Changer?

PHOTOS BY RAE HUO   It's hard to avoid baseball metaphors when talking about Hawaiian Telcom. Five years ago, faced with three straight quarters of losses, crippling debt and imminent bankruptcy, the century-old local telephone monopoly appeared to be down…

Beyond Data to Perspective

Sometimes, economists see the world more clearly than you and I. For example, the best explanation I’ve read for Hawaii’s chronic shortage of affordable housing is a recent blog entry on the website of the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization.…

Talk Story with Tyler Tokioka, Island Insurance

The president of one of the largest charitable foundations in the state talks about how and why corporations give the way they do. Why would a company like Island Insurance create a foundation rather than just give directly to charity? Before, a…