Newswatch
Local developer Bill Mills has purchased the 487-room Turtle Bay Hilton Golf & Tennis Resort on Oahu's North Shore. Turtle Bay Hilton sold
to local developerSeveral partnerships headed by Mills yesterday acquired the 860-acre beachfront resort and two golf courses from Japan-based Asahi Jyuken Co. The deal also included an additional 250 acres of land zoned for resort development.
The price was not disclosed but is expected to be lower than the $127.5 million Asahi Jyuken paid for the hotel in 1988.
The new owners likely will retain all of Turtle Bay's 500 part-time and full-time workers. Hilton Hotels Corp. will continue to manage the hotel.
The sale of the North Shore resort -- long rumored in Hawaii's real estate circles -- is the latest involving financially troubled Japanese sellers. During the past year, the 760-room Westin Maui and the 761-room Grand Wailea Resort on Maui sold for about half of what the Japanese sellers paid during the early 1990s.
Mike Sklarz, research director at Prudential Locations Inc., said the trend is positive for the local economy, since the buyers bring new capital to renovate or expand the properties.
Many Japanese investors, after paying peak prices during the boom years, were unable to make major capital improvements due to the banking and economic crises in Japan, Sklarz said.
"It makes perfect sense economically," Sklarz said.
Over the long term, the Mills group likely will revive development of other projects slated for the Kahuku property. In December 1990, Asahi Jyuken began construction of a 383-room Kawela Bay Hotel, but that project was put on hold when the Persian Gulf war hit the following January.
Asahi Jyuken had plans to build a total of 2,000 hotel rooms and 2,000 condominium units at the North Shore property.
The Turtle Bay resort, completed in 1972 at a cost of about $27 million, was developed by Prudential Insurance Co. and Del Webb, the mainland residential developer and Las Vegas casino operator.
Asahi Jyuken acquired the resort in 1988 from Prudential's Kuilima Development Corp.
Mills, a former Castle & Cooke executive, is the developer of the 1,000-unit Maui Lani residential project in Wailuku. Last year, he teamed up with Texas real estate investor Ross Perot Jr. to redevelop the Wailea Village shopping center.
Democratic Gov. Ben Cayetano has accused Republican challenger Linda Lingle of being "a cheap-shot artist," and insisted that she provide proof for her belief that his campaign is spreading a rumor that she's a lesbian. Cayetano disavows link
to Lingle rumorBut Lingle campaign manager Bob Awana yesterday refused to provide any documentation, including a memo purportedly linked to the Cayetano campaign that questions Lingle's sexual orientation.
Awana -- who spoke on behalf of Lingle, who says she's not gay -- also expanded on the suspicions of the Lingle campaign, but again without proof, charging:
nThat isle private investigator Steve Goodenow, a Cayetano campaign volunteer, is "searching for negatives" on Lingle.
Goodenow said that's not true and that he has not even run a public records check on Lingle, much less engaged in any activity that could be construed as campaign dirty tricks.
nThat the memo questioning Lingle's sexual orientation is being distributed "at the highest level of the Democratic Party."
Hawaii Democratic Party Chairman Walter Heen could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Awana said the mystery memo is "a trashy piece of work. It wasn't our plan to bring it up."
Lingle responded to the rumor earlier this week at a "talk story" rally at Kalani High School when a man wearing a Lingle T-shirt asked her about it.
Awana said the Lingle campaign did not purposefully surface the rumor, which has been whispered around the isles for more than a year, to generate sympathy for Lingle. Moreover, the Lingle camp is not behind it, he said.
Accusing Lingle of engaging in "McCarthyism at its worst," Cayetano said: "Our campaign has not engaged in any discussion of the private lives of any candidate. Private lives or lifestyles are not an issue in this election. She and her campaign staff now have a responsibility to back up their charges. If they cannot, they have disgraced their campaign effort with their irresponsible and cowardly ploy."
Awana, a former Democrat, said the memo will not be released so the identity of the Democrat who gave it to him will be protected.
Hawaiians' civil rights testimony to be heard
Nearly five years have passed since President Clinton signed the native Hawaiian "apology bill" after it was approved by Congress.Now, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights wants to know what -- if anything -- it has done for native rights.
"What we're doing basically is, this is a fact-finding hearing on the apology bill, and on what's next," said Charles K. Maxwell, chairman of the 11-member Hawaii Advisory Committee, which reports to the civil rights commission. "How does the federal government reconciliate with the native Hawaiian people?"
The commission will spend today seeking public comment on the status of civil rights for Hawaiians since Public Law 103-150 was approved.
The joint resolution -- which came during the 100th anniversary of the Jan. 17, 1893, overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy -- apologized to native Hawaiians for the participation of American citizens in the overthrow, which it said deprived Hawaiians of their right to self-determination.
The resolution expressed Congress' "commitment to acknowledge" the ramifications of the overthrow, and calls for the start of reconciliation between the United States and native Hawaiians. It urged the president to do the same.
Section 3 of the document, however, states nothing in the resolution is intended to serve as a settlement of any claims against the United States.
The meeting is from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Keoni Auditorium at the East-West Center in Manoa. The morning agenda includes talks by several local and mainland native rights experts on the purpose, meaning and implications of the resolution. The afternoon focuses on state and federal efforts to resolve claims with Hawaiians.
An open forum for public testimony follows from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Ballot design change unsettles isle Republicans
Changes in the color and layout of the new primary election ballot worry state Republicans.Donna Alcantara, GOP chairwoman, said she had asked Dwayne Yoshina, state chief elections officer, why the ballot was changed after a demonstration ballot was produced.
"My question is, Why is this being done this way?" she said. "We can't get answers from anyone in authority."
Alcantara is worried that the Democrats had two-thirds of the ballot and the large area would draw voters to it.
Yoshina yesterday said the changes were made by the printer hired by the private contractor, Election Systems & Software.
Yoshina said he thought the changes were made because, in some voting districts, there were two columns of Democrats in the primary, so all the ballots had to have two columns -- or two-thirds of the ballot -- highlighted in blue for the Democrats.
Although Yoshina said he wasn't sure that was why the changes were made, Tom Eschberger, ES&S vice president, confirmed that the ballot on the Big Island would have two columns of Democrats and the space was needed for that.
"We laid out the ballot 15 different ways to study the aesthetics of it," Eschberger said. "After 20 years of running elections, I have never had an election where every candidate and every party was 100 percent happy with the election ballot.
"But the people who lay out the ballot, they have no earthly idea who is running for governor in Hawaii, and they don't care," he said.
The company is based in Omaha, Neb.
This year, for the first time, voters will use a pencil to mark their election choices on a large paper ballot.
All candidates for all parties will be on this one large piece of paper. The paper then will be fed into an optical scanner at the polling place, and the votes will be recorded electronically.
Niihau children win Hawaiian classroom on Kauai
KEKAHA, Kauai -- Five years ago, Niihau children living on Kauai attended school in a county park in Kekaha.Their parents, adamant that their children be educated in their native language, had no other alternative when the state Department of Education refused to provide the space for a Hawaiian language immersion program at Kekaha Elementary School.
For two years, the Waimea United Church of Christ offered its auditorium as a classroom for the program until the department agreed to allocate a single classroom at Kekaha Elementary for the 40 children and four teachers.
Finally, Ke Kula Niihau O Kekaha (Niihau School in Kekaha) has a home of its own.
An hourslong traditional Niihau Hawaiian ceremony was held yesterday to dedicate the new school building, located in the former National Guard Armory in Kekaha.
The building, refurbished with $500,000 in grants from the federal government, Grace Pacific Foundation and the Consuelo Zobel Alger Foundation, has five classrooms, a computer room, an activities room and two administrative offices.
'Aha Punana Leo administers Hawaiian language immersion programs statewide, but the Niihau school is unique, said Keiki Kawaiaea of the Immersion Teacher Training department at the University of Hawaii-Hilo.
Instruction is in Niihau dialect, quite different from the Hawaiian taught at other schools, she said.
Kumua'o (teacher) Elama Kanahele said the biggest difference is that the letter "t" -- not included in the standard Hawaiian alphabet -- is often used in place of "k." Also, "some of the words we shorten up," she said. And punctuation with the macron and okina is rarely used in Niihauan.
Students also learn English and follow standard public school curriculum, but the teaching methods "are more in line with indigenous ways," Kawaiaea said.
"We can even teach calculus and trigonometry, but we do it on top of our language and culture foundation," she said.
Having a separate school building is a huge advantage over having the program within a public school, said Kawaiaea, because parental involvement is greater.
The school is expected to serve a fluctuating population of between 40 to 60 students, kindergarten through 12th grade.
Niihau families often move back and forth from Kauai's west side, depending on the work available at Niihau Ranch, and often for medical reasons.
See expanded coverage in Saturday's Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
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