PROFESSIONALISM, by my definition, is the art of doing difficult things so well it looks easy. The term in that sense can be applied to how the new Hawaii Convention Center is going up on schedule and on budget. The structure is close to 80 percent complete, far enough along for visitors to be awed by its expanses and hopeful about its final grace and beauty. Convention center
is coming along wellIt is intended to be an ad for Hawaii as well as a meeting place. Its finishes will be more like a hotel than a barn-like meeting hall. Its indoor-outdoor features take advantage of a climate that can't be replicated in many other places. There will be high-tech access throughout.
The convention center authority's executive director, Alan Hayashi, even eased my sorrow that it's not being built at the Diamond Head end of the Ala Wai by saying that site might still be stalled by ceded land and flood protection concerns.
This one is on target for structural completion in November and opening in mid-1998.
There are touches of design genius in the center. A necessary fire escape route has become a grand staircase with waterfall leading down to the Ala Wai Canal. The giant steel trusses needed to create a 200,000-square-foot exhibition hall free of pillars are adapted so that 800 cars can park amid them.
Second-floor parking permits a street-level hall and avoids having parking below ground, where it could be expensive to keep water out.
It is Hawaii's biggest-ever use of the design-build concept. For a pre-set price of $200 million, a consortium is committed to finish on time, without cost overruns and with substantial penalties for every day it is late. Among four entrants, the winning design was chosen unanimously by two separate review teams.
The Hawaiianness of the center is still more of a promise than a visible reality. From Kapiolani Boulevard the 80-foot high entry-way support beams now look like steel banana plants.
But they will have living palms, other greenery and water effects spread beneath them and throughout. The planter boxes are in place. So are the pool beds and waterways.
Conventioneers debarking from buses may go into either the exhibition hall at ground level or take escalators up to the third-floor meeting rooms and fourth-floor ballroom and gardens. Escalators, all protected from rain but exposed to a taste of outdoors, will be the main way to move up and down.
Traffic jams around the center are a major public concern. An extra traffic lane has been added that fully circles the center, passing inside it along the Ala Wai frontage.
Hayashi says three nationally recognized companies worked on the traffic plan and have given assurances it will work. He's not above suggesting that for the very biggest conventions drivers may want to keep away from the center when they can.
The first two giant bookings, expected to draw 30,000 people each to Waikiki, are the American Dental Association for Oct. 5-15, 1999, and Lions International for June 18-23, 2000. Most times there will be smaller conventions, conceivably three at once.
ON a recent walk-through of the premises, a small group of us were impressed by the openness, the views of the Ala Wai and the ocean, the 18- to 20-foot ceilings for the meeting rooms, theaters and ballroom, and the prospect of fine art and greenery soon to be added.
A mural of early Hawaiians landing in the islands will greet visitors as the escalators deliver them to the third-floor meeting room level. The State Foundation on Culture and the Arts is consulting on art choices. A Jean Charlot fresco is in place already.
The fourth level has the ballroom at the mauka end facing a gardened area makai. Two floors could be added over the gardens if demand warrants.
The Hawaii Convention Center never can grow into a giant center like some on the mainland, but it will have unique Hawaiian qualities and should be a source of local pride. It is intended to draw from both East and West and favorably advertise Hawaii to conventioners.
I think it can even as I worry about its financial success.