RENDERING COURTESY KAUAI ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT BOARD Ground was to be broken on Kauai today for a $4.6 million building that will house high-tech defense contractors working at the Navy's Pacific Missile Range. An artist's rendering shows what the center will look like after it is completed.

High tech is on
a fast track on Kauai

The island's big draw for high-tech firms
has been the Navy's Pacific Missile Range

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By Anthony Sommer
tsommer@starbulletin.com

LIHUE >> High-tech businesses leased no office space on Kauai in 1998, said Pam Parker, marketing director of the Kauai Economic Development Board.

But by 2005, Parker said yesterday, there will be more than 100,000 square feet leased to high-tech enterprises, including three manufacturing plants.

The board was scheduled to break ground today for a second high-tech center in Waimea and, later in the day, conduct a blessing at a third building in Puhi, on which it has taken a long-term lease.

The development board also is negotiating to buy a vacant building complex as its fourth site and is looking at property for a fifth building.

The board's big draw has been the Navy's Pacific Missile Range on the west tip of Kauai.

Largely through the efforts of U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, millions of dollars have been pumped into the base to install tracking, telemetry and communications equipment, and for the testing of advanced weapons systems.

All of the hardware and software being tested at the range or used for submarine or surface warship training is built by large defense contractors. And all have many subcontractors.

The vast ocean area that makes up the Pacific Missile Range is one of the few tests sites available where there is no commercial shipping or commercial aviation.

"Forty-two thousand square miles of un-intruded space from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the sky," Parker said.

At last week's test of the Navy's new missile interceptor rocket, more than 600 people, most of them technicians from contractors and subcontractors, were on temporary duty at the Pacific Missile Range.

At the same time, also largely through Inouye's efforts, the Office of Naval Research recently established a major presence in Hawaii, and companies doing business with it are opening offices on Kauai.

The use of the Pacific Missile Range as a high-tech magnet has been the goal of Kauai Economic Development Park President Gary Baldwin who, not surprisingly, is a close ally of Inouye's.

Baldwin said his best skill is writing grant applications, and he spends much of his time at his laptop computer doing just that. He does not have an office, just a large work table in the development board's conference room.

One of the requirements is that the tenants pay "market rate" for rent. Baldwin said the rates are high because much of the work done by many of the tenants is classified, and the buildings need security enhancements.

The West Kauai Technology Center in Waimea opened four years ago. Among its first tenants was Textron, one of the nation's largest defense contractors, which provides much of the missile-tracking equipment used at the base.

Trex Enterprises, a San Diego-based company, soon followed. Among other things, Trex manufactures the coatings used on the lenses of Textron's optical tracking equipment.

Trex has made it a policy to hire only young scientists from Hawaii who otherwise would have remained on the mainland.