By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Gov. Ben Cayetano and Alton Kuioka, head of the Convention
Center Authority, put mementos in the center's time capsule yesterday.
Items inside include a Star-Bulletin feature story
on the center's construction.

Convention center
in pitch mode

Opening celebrations
are aimed at wooing groups
that could exhibit here

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

The Hawaii Convention Center has been blessed and its cornerstone laid -- complete with a time capsule of artifacts related to its creation.

Now comes an intense few days of opening celebrations, aimed mostly at pitching the center hard to decision makers from across the nation who will influence the choice of locations for hundreds of conventions.

Then it will be down to business, seeing to the smooth operation of 25 meetings planned for the rest of this year and a total of 60 definite bookings after that, and working to confirm another 86 tentative bookings.

Yesterday's formal blessing was a tribute to those who for more than a decade pushed to get a convention center built, the legislators and government executives who backed it, and the team that planned and finished it.

Gov. Ben Cayetano placed a copy of his 1998 State of the State address into the steel-box time capsule. Senate President Norman Mizuguchi put in a Senate gavel. Alton Kuioka, chairman of the state's Convention Center Authority, included two framed pages from the Aug. 4, 1997, Star-Bulletin, which included a page-one feature on how the center was built.

Paul Oshiro, vice speaker of the House of Representatives, put in a copy of House Bill S7, the 1993 measure that formally approved the center's site on the former Aloha Motors site at Kapiolani Boulevard and Kalakaua Avenue.

Eugene Watanabe, vice president of the Honolulu architectural firm Wimberley, Allison, Tong & Goo which designed the center, put in a set of "final site instructions." Watanabe also represented the design-build team of Nordic/PCL Joint Venture, which did the $200 million construction job.

Cayetano and Kuioka locked the box and the governor helped seal it into a corner of the structure on the Atkinson Avenue side.

Now it's time to sell bookings and get the center running, said officials at yesterday's ceremony.

Radio station executive Jeff Coelho, who headed the opening celebration committee for the authority, said the $250,000 expenditure on the ceremonies is aimed mostly at marketing the center to more than 300 meeting planners from around the country.

But there also will be opportunities for the public to get to know the center. Public events include:

Dedication ceremony at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Kamehameha Day. Gov. Ben Cayetano will preside and the Royal Hawaiian Band performs with third graders from Lunalilo Elementary School.

Ala Wai Pageant, 6:30 p.m to 8 p.m. Friday. People representing King Kamehameha and his royal court will sail up the Ala Wai to the center, led by dancers and chanters on outrigger canoes.

No public parking, but there will free trolley shuttles from the UH athletic facility parking structure.

Public open house, noon to 4:30 p.m. Saturday.

The public gets to walk through the center. No parking and the same trolley arrangement as for the pageant.

Events that aren't open to the public are the grand opening reception and dinner Thursday, a black-tie event free for the meeting planners and about 15 leading travel and trade publication writers, and $250 a head for others. There will be an invitation-only "mahalo breakfast" Friday, for those made the center possible.