TYCOONS: Henry J.’s Pink Hawaii

Hawaii has never been the same since a bald, rotund tourist wafted in on the trade winds for a vacation in 1954. The tourist was Henry J. Kaiser, fresh from several careers as wartime shipbuilder, automaker, steelman and millionaire chief of a vast industrial empire. Vacationing with his second wife, Kaiser found hotel accommodations scarce on Honolulu’s crowded Waikiki Beach, rented a house near Diamond Head, and sat back to wonder who would house the hordes of mainlanders he felt sure would discover the island’s natural beauty and balmy climate. His predictable answer: Henry J. Kaiser.

Thereupon Kaiser launched a new career as the biggest—and most controversial—booster and builder ever to hit Hawaii. He has already built about $50 million worth of hotels, hospitals, plants and housing developments and, at 78, feels that he is only beginning. Last week Kaiser showed off the first houses in his most ambitious project: Hawaii Kai, a projected $350 million dream city on the eastern end of Oahu Island, to be built on 6,000 acres between picturesque Maunalua Bay and Kuapa Fishpond.

Hawaii Kai, which Hawaiians call the “Pink Dream,” will eventually contain about 11,000 single-family houses—ranging from $25,000 to more than $45,000—for some 75,000 people. Plans call for 20 miles of man-made beach, schools, country clubs and marinas. Like all of Kaiser’s other Hawaii projects—including his hotels, his fleet of 200 vehicles, bulldozers and cranes, and his private navy of dredges—the houses in Hawaii Kai will feature Kaiser’s favorite color: shocking pink. His engineers say the job will take ten years, but Kaiser insists it will be five.

Cement & Thatches. Kaiser started in a small way—for him. He bought $3,000,000 worth of land bordering on Waikiki, created his own beach and artificial lagoon, and started work on his Hawaiian Village Hotel. In short order, he built 70 thatch-roofed units, a million-dollar 100-room hotel, a 1,000-seat convention hall, a 14-story, 260-room Ocean Tower, an aluminum dome for the convention over flow, and a $1.5 million, 13-story hotel. Now being finished are a pair of $5 million, 17-story hotels called the Diamond Head Towers, which will give the Hawaiian Village more rooms (1,600) than any other hotel in Hawaii. Kaiser plans to raise the total to 5,000 when business justifies it. Says he: “Conventions can equal the rest of the tourist business in Hawaii combined.”

Kaiser is so bullish about Hawaii’s future that this year he opened a $13.5 million Permanente Cement plant with a capacity (1.7 million barrels annually) just about equaling the present cement consumption of Hawaii. He is confident that new buildings will rise to use his cement, but his move got him into a feud with Hawaii’s powerful Dillingham family, which owns a share of a huge cement plant. Kaiser has also built the $4 million Kaiser Medical Center, the islands’ most modern hospital, has built two clinics and is planning a third to accommodate 40,000 members he has signed up in his own health plan. His other Hawaiian interests include a radio and TV station and a fleet of twin-hulled tour boats (catamarans).

So far, Kaiser has made little money on his projects, which have been financed by loans and vast transfusions from his industrial empire. But he is confident that profits will come, is gradually paring down the traditionally high cost of Hawaiian construction by buying in large quantities, adopting efficiency techniques, using such local materials as coral (for cement) and volcanic cinder (for building blocks).

Trouble in Paradise. But not all has been smooth in paradise. Besides taking on the Dillingham family in what Hawaiians call “the Battle of the Millionaires,” Kaiser has had a go at almost everyone. His pressure (usually successful) in pushing through zoning laws to suit his projects has angered many residents. He has tangled publicly with the doctors in his hospital (over their salaries), the Coast Guard (his $225,000 catamaran, since turned in for a smaller one, could not pass inspection for commercial use), the Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation (Hawaii Kai will replace large crop areas), the Hawaii Yacht Club (he wanted to call his club the Hawaii Kai Yacht Club), the airlines (he threatened to start his own airline to the mainland), and his radio station’s disc jockey, J. Akuhead Pupule, Hawaii’s most popular disc jockey—whom Kaiser fired last week. Asked the Honolulu Advertiser in an editorial: “Who’s running Hawaii?” The paper indicated that Kaiser was—and it did not like it.

Despite the squabbles, most Hawaiians look on Kaiser with the same mixture of awe, fascination and affection that they accord their smoldering volcanoes. His capacity for work is enormous. He is up before 5 a.m., begins inspecting his projects almost immediately, keeps an active hand in his widespread interests by daily telephone calls to the U.S., where his son Edgar has taken over the main direction of the Kaiser empire. He is putting the finishing touches on a $1,000,000 house for himself on Maunalua Bay. It has a YMCA-size swimming pool, a restaurant-size kitchen, built-in movie equipment and wallpaper covered with the HJK monogram that Kaiser puts on most of his possessions. In true Kaiser style, even his poodles live like kings, with a covered exercise area in their kennel of gold-anodized aluminum, a trophy room, a maternity ward and a beauty salon—all soundproofed.