Honolulu Star-Bulletin Business /2005/03/24/

[ FAST FACTS HAWAII ]

REMAKING A LANDMARK LAGOON

FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM
Workers have begun drilling operations around the Hilton Hawaiian Village lagoon. In the next year and a half, Hilton plans to make the lagoon shallower, smaller and cleaner and to install a public boardwalk at a cost of $5 million.

Insurance fraud brings 8-day prison sentence

The state Insurance Division said it has recently prosecuted four cases against motor vehicle insurance fraud, one of which resulted in an eight-day prison sentence.

Among the outcomes:

» Patricia Birtodaso was sentenced to perform 50 hours of community service and pay $100 to the victim compensation fund;
» Kitsana Khamphaphanh was sentenced to eight days in prison, 50 hours of community service and to pay $100 to the victim fund;
» Michael Gomez was ordered to pay $100 to the victim fund; and
» Georgian Katsuda was sentenced to 200 hours of community service and to pay $100 to the victim fund.

22 Waimanalo homes sell to tenants

The state housing agency has helped sell 22 Waimanalo Village homes to the people who rent them through an Affordable for Sale Program. The program, run by the Housing and Community Development Corporation of Hawaii and the nonprofit Waimanalo Village Residence Corp., has made up to 38 rental units available to current residents for prices from $112,500 to $135,000.

The state agency holds the master lease to Waimanalo Village, and sale proceeds go toward paying for the current mortgage held by the Waimanalo Village Residence Corp.

UH software project gets grant

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded $2.5 million to a project in which the University of Hawaii is participating to develop a new financial management software for colleges and universities.

The Kuali Project is based on a financial system design used at Indiana University for more than 10 years. The $7.2 million two-year project is scheduled to complete its initial system by summer 2007.

DOING THEIR PART

GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Capt. Dennis Nagamine, left, a senior pilot for Hawaiian Airlines, was one of 60 employees honored yesterday for aiding the United States in Iraq. Hawaiian's jets were used to transport some 4,000 troops at the start of the war in Iraq in spring 2003, and the employees voluntarily signed up to help. Hawaiian Airlines President Mark Dunkerley, right, gave a commemorative coin to Nagamine. At center is Air Force Maj. Gen. Mark Volcheff.

After 14 years, Tokyo prices rise

Tokyo's first rise in commercial property prices in 14 years is likely to add to Japan's attractiveness for overseas real estate investors, U.S.-based brokers and analysts said.

Commercial property values in the capital's five central business areas rose an average 0.5 percent in 2004, a government said yesterday. Nationwide land prices, which fell 5 percent and extended a 14-year slide, dropped at the slowest pace since 2000.

"The real estate community believes that the 15-year recession is at least taking a break and that values are now to be had in buying prime properties in Tokyo," said John Coppedge, executive vice president for international operations at Cushman & Wakefield.

Morgan Stanley, Starwood Capital Group LLC and other overseas real estate investment funds have been buying Japanese property, seeking bargains among assets that have lost as much as 80 percent of their value from the peak of the so-called bubble economy. Tokyo, which has lured much of that money, yesterday reported downtown residential prices rose in 2004 for the first time since 1987.