I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech, growing agriculture in Hawaii. Today with Denise Yamaguchi, she runs the Hawaii Agricultural Foundation. Very important, and we're going to talk to her about the future of agriculture in Hawaii because it's really critical. It's the center of the channel, and Denise knows more about it than most people. Welcome to the show, Denise. I've been looking forward to this, and now I'm happy we're here together. Well, thanks for having me today. Okay, food, food is love. If you want to look for aloha, food is there. Food has a place in aloha, and we have so many different kinds of food here. A lot of our love of food is deep in our history, in our multicultural background. So where we are today is the important 90% of our food to Hawaii. And really, I'll tell you the truth, all of us, every time we take a bite of food, we should remember that. 90% coming from somewhere else. Now, maybe good, but it's coming from somewhere else, not really sustainable in the case of natural disasters. Who knows what? And without food, life is really tough without food. I'll go on record with that, Denise. I care about food for Hawaii, and I care about developing agriculture in Hawaii. And I don't think it's high enough on our list of priorities. You were on the movie we made, just scaling up the Hawaii's food future with Kim Baster, that was very good. It's been playing on PBS Hawaii, I don't know if you've seen it there, on the big screen. A lot of people have had very nice comments about it, including comments about you, Denise.  So I guess I'll dive right into it. Let's start with the assumption that we're, as a state, as a state government, a state society, we're not doing enough to make food sustainable here. And we do rely, do 90% or more, of our food from the mainland. What are we going to do about it? I mean, boutique foods are not enough. We have to have staple crops that can feed our people. What are we going to do about it? Well, you know, Jay, if you really think about agriculture in Hawaii, Hawaii has a long history with agriculture. Most of us that live in Hawaii come from parents and grandparents who were once farmers and worked the land, they worked on the plantations. So back, you know, immigration started in the 1860s, and we all come from a plantation and agricultural background. And so there's, should be no reason why we can't have more agriculture in our state. If you look at the Hawaiians, at one point they were 100% sustainable. You know, the population of 200, 250,000 people were sustained by these islands. So there's no reason why we can't do this. When the plantations did phase out, you know, we should phase out sugar and pine in the 1970s through the 1990s. It was a time for us to diversify agriculture. And during that period, it's been tough moving from monocrops to diversified crops. And of course, when, you know, these large plantations got out of agriculture, of course, imports became more extensive and things that farmers needed just escalated. And so it's been a tough time for agriculture to get moving again and toward diversification. Our state, you know, if we really want to diversify our economy, you know, to other industries such as agriculture, we need to make a commitment. And that commitment has to start from, I mean, it has to start with the people. Our people need to tell our government leaders, hey, agriculture is important.  When you look at our state budget, you know, one third of 1% goes to agriculture.  If we, if we really want to double food production, and that's going to take longer than five, 10, 20 years even, we're going to have to actually put more effort and more funding and more, you know, we're all going to have to work together to make that happen. And so there just needs a lot of commitment by everyone to make that happen. I told you about the story, didn't I, where we had an agricultural program for Think Tech downtown, you know, downtown forum. Man came out of the crowd, pat me on the shoulder and said that he was part of Silicon Valley, Huey, and want to invest in Hawaii agriculture. And he wanted me to introduce him to people, which I did over a period of time. And I tried really hard to make him interested in that. And he looked at it, looked at it, looked at it. And then finally, he took me out to dinner. And he told me he had made his decision. I said, what was that? He says, he's going to invest in tourism. The return was better. Okay? And you know, you can't, it's probably accurate, the return is better. But he doesn't live here. He's not committed to this. He doesn't really care about the sustainability of the state in case of natural disaster. We have to care. And, you know, it's a serious problem. And I don't know exactly what to do, but I want to create a case study with you. Okay, case study. I'm going to give you a billion dollars today. I'm going to write you a check. Send it any way you want. You can put it through the Hawaii Agriculture Foundation or any other agricultural organization. How do you spend it in order to achieve, you know, ketchup on agriculture in Hawaii? You know, that's a good question. I mean, a billion dollars is a lot of money. If you look at where agriculture has been successful in creating spaces where there's efficiencies, I think you're looking at technology and you're looking at new ways of doing agriculture. Conventional farming in the ground is tough, is a tough business. You have weather, you have bugs, you have pests, you have all kinds of natural disasters that could occur to your farm. So if we look at, you know, putting a billion dollars into infrastructure, the best thing to do is invest in greenhouses, maybe vertical farming, you're looking at aquaponics, hydroponics, you're looking at drone technology, you're looking at investing in those types of infrastructure so we can grow food production. There's also other kinds of crops that we can grow in Hawaii that may be successful and we just haven't gotten there yet. Like hemp might be a good crop for us, but we as a, you know, government hasn't allowed that crop to actually grow here. And so, you know, it's a matter of making choices. And I think a billion dollars, you could do a lot. I mean, you know, look at what's happening on Lanai and I think, you know, with the hydroponic farms there and they've been, they've during the pandemic were able to export some of their produce to O'ahu because they were able to produce a lot in those greenhouses. So if you were to give me a billion dollars, that's what I would probably look at doing is finding the best technologies and efficiencies with ag tech and invest that money there. So does that mean the university? Does it mean research? Does it mean the College of Tropical Agriculture? Does it mean, you know, getting, getting, developing companies of young people, young technology people here in Hawaii and giving them assignments and, you know, supporting investing their efforts? That's, I think that's one way, but I also think looking at leveraging those dollars and partnering with other companies to bring technology here. People that already know how to do this. We're not, you know, we are on an island and we always, you know, if you look beyond our shores, there's so many people that are in agriculture around the world that are doing it. And so to find the best people to, you know, give that billion dollars to leverage it and figure out ways in which that money's can go further, I think is, is the way I would look at it. I would look at investing in companies that have those best practices and those best technologies. Well, do you think we need supports, you know, like on the mainland for, I don't know, 100 years, we've had, you know, crop supports and all that. And so you start out with the notion that the farmers don't make money. What does Richard Ha say? If the farmer makes money, he will farm. If he doesn't make money, he won't farm. That's pretty basic. So crop supports, would that help? Absolutely. Subsidies, I think, aren't necessary at this point.  I think the dairy industry is, you know, hugely subsidized by the federal government. So if we, as a state, invested some of that money and subsidized some of these farmers and really put money into those industries, whether it's, you know, poultry or even our beef supply, right? Our fisheries, our, you know, aquaculture community. I think if we were to subsidize some of that, especially the infrastructure, because infrastructure costs are the highest. I mean, we run a 288 per egg park in Punea with 20 farmers. And I was able to get a grant for one farmer for a pump to push water uphill, right? Because not all land is flat. And most people don't see farms anymore, but farms in Hawaii are not necessarily on flat land. You have low-key land, you have all different kinds of terrains. And so, you know, when you're talking about water and infrastructure, irrigation is critical. And that equipment is really expensive. And so, you know, that's what it'll take. I think sometimes government will need to subsidize it. I also think what Donovan is doing out in Whitmore Village and working to build back Wahiwa as a plantation community for diversified ag is critical. I mean, one of the solutions is looking at these ag clusters. But when you talk about an ag cluster, it's not just about, I mean, you sent me this article on food hubs and food hubs, of course, are important. I think it's the first step. But in order for an ag... Tell people what a food hub is. It's just in today's Civil Beat, that article, yeah? Right. So, a food hub is basically an aggregator of different farms who bring their produce together, process it, and get it to market. But in order for, you know, when you're looking at farming, we have 7,000 small farmers here in our island. So, those food hubs will definitely help. But when you look at scaling ag, really scaling ag, you're going to need something like an ag cluster, right? An ag cluster would be you need workforce housing for the people that work there. You're going to need maybe retail outlets, you're going to need food processing, you're going to need major infrastructure distribution points, right, from wherever those farms are going to be. So, I do think that an investment in an ag cluster or building that ag cluster in one location and seeing if that works is a tremendous undertaking. But it also gives us hope to put all those pieces together in one place so that ag is concentrated and we're not building small little, you know, areas of ag that aren't going to make a difference. I think, you know, Galworth lands, all those lands that the state invested in and invested in farms and then putting this Whitmore Village there where there is a cluster of different types of processing, housing, retail, maybe even some ag tourism out there is the right way to go because it's concentrated, it makes sense. And I think long-term, it's not a short-term project, it's a long-term project, but if we're going to invest in agriculture, I really think, you know, having them in different communities across the state, you know, it is the right way to go. So, what's the role of government? You know, I mean, they always say, everybody always says that the biggest landowner in the state of Hawaii is the government, you know, and if the government wanted to give land for farming, it has plenty of inventory. It may not, as you say, it may not all be even, some of it may be hilly or rocky, but it's land. And there could be a lot of land that comes out of the government inventory that is dedicated to that. On the other hand, how much do we want government involved in this? Should government be, you know, proximate, you know, directly involved of the organizer of these projects you're talking about? Or should government have incentives instead and be on the sidelines? Or is it all of the foregoing? What is the role of government in this? Well, I think that the government can play in a number of roles. Like you said, there's so many different ways government can support and help. Number one, it could be a direct role right where they are, the landowner, where they develop an ag park. And I understand that the governor did put some money into develop an ag park in Cuneo. But again, you know, I'm not sure how good they are at managing, you know, being able to manage an agricultural park, but then making, maybe making some of it privatized and privatizing it and making it more efficient would be the way to go. But I also think that there are leaders, certain leaders in government that have ideas that can put monies toward different projects, such as the Wahiawa Innovation Center, which again is in that ag cluster that can take, you know, it's forward thinking because not all those lands are in been leased out to farmers yet. But once it starts to get leased out and we start to figure out, you know, what we're going to do, we can have small businesses innovate and create products in those areas, because value added product or commercial, now it is called commercial packaged products, consumer packaged products, I'm sorry, are you know, going to be vital to also support ag in the long term. If we also, if we look at agriculture too, I mean, diversified ag is one thing, but I think, you know, also looking at export, right, because you can't just have, it's hard to have a diversified industry and just provide for ourselves, right. If we're really going to scale ag, you have to look at players like Mahi Pono, who have taken over 40,000 acres of sugar lab on Maui and are investing in all different types of crops. I mean, they've actually planted over a million citrus trees on Maui where sugar used to be, but they're not looking at it all for Hawaii, they're looking at it, some of that as export, but if you, they're smart, I mean, they, those guys are experts in farming, that's conventional farming, they're experts in farming, they understand the market, see, that's the other thing is understanding the market and what sales are at a higher value, right. So citrus is really expensive, if you go to the market, it costs you a dollar or more for a lemon. Now, if they planted a million lemon trees, there's a market for that in Hawaii, but I'm sure there's a market for that somewhere else. Larry Jess is the largest farmer here on Oahu and I think he has still has some non-molokai, he is really smart at understanding the market and if farmers, you know, understand the market and they can foresee what, you know, where those pukas are going to be and they can anticipate what to grow, they'll get the top dollar for that commodity or that product. So, you know, again, there's some sophistication, there's a lot of sophistication to farming and, you know, it's finding those farmers that know how to do it. I'm sorry, I deviated from the government question, but again, government can play many different roles and I can't answer that question because, you know, sometimes government gets in the way, but at the same time, there's other times where you really need government there and so I can't give you a straight answer. Well, let me give you one thing that occurs to me listening to your thoughts about it and that is, you know, at the end of the day, we have to feed our people, especially in times of need and those times will come, we have climate change and so, you know, it's a pretty serious, a pretty serious issue and if, you know, so as Richard Haas says, if the farmer doesn't make any money, he's not going to farm and if we compete on staples coming from California, we won't make any money, the farmers won't do that and so the government or somebody had to figure out a way to make staples profitable enough, you know, with supports, incentives, what have you, so that we do have staples because as in the film, you know, we had chocolate in the film, we had Kohana Rum in the film and there's various chocolate companies and various rum companies in Hawaii, O'Coley Hau, what have you, that are, that are boutique, right and we like boutique because boutique has a white brand and it sells for, you know, a high margin on the mainland but it doesn't feed the people who are hungry, that's the problem so we have to find a way to serve both of those interests, that is to help the farmer make money even with boutique and also to make the farmer, to incentivize the farmer to grow staples so I really would like your thoughts about how we achieve both of those things and I hear what you're saying, you have to have both, you have to have both for a robust agricultural sector, it can't be just the one, staples or boutique, the other, it has to be both because they kind of feed on each other, the expertise you develop in one area is useful in the other especially in terms of, you know, people expertise and business acumen expertise and, you know, the way you organize a farm so my question is how do we achieve both of them? How do we achieve, ask a question again, how do we achieve staples and boutique? So I think we are already growing staples here in Hawaii, we just don't know it, I mean, believe it or not, Larry just, again, four farmers to succeed, right, they either have to be small boutique farms that are growing a high, high valued crop, for example, chocolate, right, you mentioned chocolate, you talk about, we're back to sugarcane because that can be created into a higher value added product, but then at the same time, if you look at aloon farms and you look at Larry Jeff, they're not subsidized by the government, they're conventional farmers, but then you need scale and that's what, and that's all of it and you got to be able to time the market. I don't know what Larry Jeff's secret is, but he grows, if you go to the market, his stuff is not necessarily branded local, but it is a regular beef steak tomato you're buying and it was produced here. And it's competitive in price. It's competitive in price, but again, he has scale. So I don't know how you help farmers achieve scale because that's a big question. If I could write the book on how to take a one acre farmer to a five acre farmer to a 10 acre farmer to a 20 acre farmer, I would have all the answers for you. When we started this ag park in 2011, the goal was to help farmers scale. And I thought, okay, well, you know what, this is great. We can write the book on how to take that small farmer to five acres to 10 acres, but I've been doing this for 10 years now. And it's not that simple. It is not a simple. Well, let me offer a thought, you know, and what came out of the movie was the Dean of the of sitar, I guess, you know, was talking about, hey, let's build, let's build the hot houses. Okay, because you control things, control the temperature, the rainfall, control the nutrition, you know, the season growing, the growing season, all that stuff, you know, and that and to me, that's, you know, obvious, even if it costs money for the hot house is shed, you know, we can do better, we can more yield per acre, more yield for the effort involved. And so that's one thing. But you mentioned something that I think we should focus on here in this discussion just for a minute. And that is vertical farming, farming farming is completely indoors, like in in the Milly Lonnie, the Milly Lonnie experience that was in the movie, how they have more in garden. Yeah, right, Murray's garden.  And you provide nutrition and water and you have a really perfect kind of crop. And if you expand that, talk about scale, if you expand that to a larger building in a larger building, and then you include the fish in the hydroponic cycle and all that, you're really creating a lot. And the food is good. And conceivably, you can, you know, make it very efficient, as you say, efficient, and grow a lot of it. And we could do that. And it wouldn't be outside. And it wouldn't involve the problems of soil, if you will. We just got to get our hands around the technology. No, no, it's not the technology, it's the cost. And the technology is that I went to Lonnie and the technology is available. It's the building of that greenhouse that is extremely expensive. So, you know, Richard Ha, you mentioned Richard Ha, Richard Ha from Hamaquah Springs had tomatoes and he was growing hydroponic tomatoes. But to read, I think he had it maybe, I don't know, guessing like 10 years. And it was just the life cycle of that greenhouse, aquaponics, I'm sorry, hydroponic tomato was at its end of its life. So he looked at putting, replacing it, but the replacement costs were so high, it would have taken him years and years and years to recoup the cost. So unless you have, like you told me, you give me a billion dollars, talk about Larry Ellis and having a billion dollars, he's able to put that infrastructure in to feed that island. So that island, like I said, it will probably be very food secure down the road if he keeps his commitment to making that island sustainable because the infrastructure cost, maybe down the road, the infrastructure cost will come down. But at the moment, to build those greenhouses and the infrastructure that the aquaponics and hydroponic sits in is very expensive. Upfront capital investment, Larry Ellison can afford that and not everybody can. And maybe part of your billion would go there and grow, create infrastructure that will last a long time. There's not a lot of maintenance involved and keep on producing. But with the billion, we need to decide, you and me right here now, Denise, what kind of crops we want to grow? What are your favorites? It's easy to like boutique because boutique is always fun and sexy and high profit margin. But aside from boutique, I mean, should we focus on beef? I personally think that Hawaii is probably better off focusing on produce because it's healthier because it doesn't have the same effect on the environment. But what do you think? What should we focus on? So I wanted to mention one thing before we close because this is important. I think we all want to support the small farmer and of course, we support small farmers. But I mentioned Mahi Pono, which is a large-scale farm. I also went out to Wailua Fresh, which is a Villarosa farm. They came from the mainland, invested millions and millions of dollars into an egg-producing facility. So they have 200,000 hens. If we want to move the needle on food production, it's going to take large-scale farming to really move that needle fast. If we look at working with, we have 7,300 farms. Well, of those 7,300 farms, well, percent of those farms produce 90% of our food. So we, you know, if we look at about local food. Yes, local food. If we look at, you know, sometimes Hawaii is not that nice to for, you know, not I want to say foreign investment, but non-local investment. But sometimes we need it because we don't have the funding to do it. Mr. Vander Sluut from Hawaii meets just invested or bought the two slaughterhouses. He's a billionaire from, you know, Idaho. I think that if he can invest money into those slaughterhouses so we can have more local beef, I'm happy. You know, we don't have that kind of capital here on our own. So, you know, you talk about the role of government. What's either going to come from government because government has a lot of money, but we've seen already the pattern of government. We haven't put a lot of money toward infrastructure toward agriculture. But now we have these outside investors that, you know, want to support and help us see opportunity, right? Again, those big businesses have to make money. They see opportunity. But if we really want to move the needle on increasing our food supply and increasing sustainability here on our islands, you know, we have to look at that as an opportunity.  This wild little fresh has 200,000 hen and they said it usually takes a hen per person in the population. But if they can just replace what's being imported now, that's huge because most of our eggs are imported. One of the things that came up in that downtown forum program I told you about was that if you want to have offshore investment, you have to manage it. This is one of Hawaii's structural weaknesses over the years.  And so, you know, to me, if the legislature was going to be involved in this, and it should be, it would structure these clusters. It would provide a framework, okay, and the framework would involve a whole bunch of parameters and guardrails. Among them would be if you want to invest in agriculture in Hawaii, you follow our guardrails and our structure. You can't come in here and do everything and anything you want because we ultimately have to control this in order to make the states sustainable. Do you agree with that or should we just make it a free for all? I don't know. I don't understand what you mean by guardrails. Well, if they want to come in here and invest in agriculture, do we limit them in any way?  But again, then government's going to have to do something about it. I just don't think putting up guardrails, more guardrails, more regulation, more anything is going to help agriculture. I think if anything, it's going to hurt agriculture. I think we need to be open-minded about others who want to come here and invest and do the right thing because I don't see somebody that wants to help us build the beef industry or build an ag, build the egg industry or build, you know, poultry industry. We don't have a poultry industry. We import almost all of our chickens, right, that we eat. Why is that a bad thing? They're helping us, they're helping us. So if there is a pandemic or there is a natural disaster, we have the farm right here on the islands. We can get it. I just don't see guardrails and regulation as the answer to helping agriculture. I don't think we, I think, you know, poor capitalist society, right? So I'm sorry. I mean, I don't know if that's the way to say it. A very, very good point, Denise. I really appreciate it.  One other thing I want to talk about, and that goes to your other activity that you have been involved in over your career in food, or in love, as the Kate Food is love, is the Food and Wine Festival. You've been running that for a long time, and you have developed it and refined it and tuned it up, and it is very important. It raises the question of whether the public understands the problem, whether the public, when they go to the, you know, when the market, and they make their food choices, do they understand about buying local? Do they understand about supporting, for example, candidates for office who will talk about, you know, supporting the agricultural industry? If the public doesn't understand, we'll never get through this. The public needs to understand lobby and, you know, force the government to do what the government should be doing to develop the industry. And the Food and Wine Festival essentially is a channel to do that. Can you talk about, you know, the public sentiment on this and how it can be changed, and to the extent that it should be changed? So let me tell you a little bit about Food and Wine. So what Food and Wine Festival was started in 2011 as a way to help promote local agriculture. The whole goal was to utilize the celebrity of the chef to promote our local farmers, ranchers, and fishermen. We asked all of our chefs to use a locally caught, caught, raised, or grown product. And we, you know, to this day still do that and try to educate the public on how you can utilize local ag and what is grown here, and why it's so much better than a mainland product that comes, you know, 5,000 miles away. So that has always been the centerpiece for Hawaii Food and Wine. Hawaii Food and Wine Festival has also been able to put a spotlight on Hawaii as a culinary destination. You talk about opportunity for agriculture. We have had pre-pandemic 10 million tourists coming to our islands, right? During that time, there was a survey done that said 78.24% of all visitors would be willing to pay more if they knew that that dish or that whole, that, that operator, restaurant operator, or that hotel was buying from a local farm, a local farm, or that product was local. So that says a lot about how the visitor industry can also support and help us. But the goal of that, our festival is really to put a spotlight on our, our islands as a culinary destination and to promote the best of our local agriculture. The other, that, so that's number one, is to make our residents and visitors aware of the kinds of things that can grow here in our islands and how good we are at it. That's, that was the first step, right? Through, through Hawaii Ag Foundation, what, when I did the festival, we had so, we got a lot of media attention, you know, we were able to also put a spotlight on our local post culture. We've been able to use, do a lot with that platform. At a particular point in time, a local legislator asked me, hey, Denise, can we talk about food and ag issues? Because, you know, we have so much, we have so much in fighting in the industry and, or we have people that are against the industry and we just need to kind of get, come together. So can you create something that will address food and agricultural issues to inform the community? And so through the Hawaii Ag Foundation, not through Food and Wine, because I just felt that it would get lost in a lot of the media attention that, you know, the chefs and all that going on, we started something called Eat, Think, Drink. And Eat, Think, Drink, we are in our 18th episode now. Our next one is on June 15th, but we've covered all different kinds of ag and fishing issues across the state, whether it be how to get, how to get investment in ag, about how, how agriculture affects the planet. We've talked about regenerative agriculture. We've talked about farm to school, just a number of ag issues to make the community aware. And we're not, my goal was not to get the ag community out, you know, only the ag community, because then we'd be talking to each other. My goal was to get, you know, the regularly person to start getting interested in these ag issues, because you talk about how we're going to make change. The only way we're going to make change in government is to get the people to push. I mean, when you have a community that wants it, government will do the right thing. I'm going to tell you now, you know, I used to work in Washington, D.C., my very first job out of college was working for Senator Danny, you know, and I was in Washington and I thought, gosh, I made it. I'm at the top of the food chain. I'm at the federal level. Well, you know, I came back home and I started working with the state government. And then I got this opportunity to work with Norwegian Cruise Line at the county level. And I thought, oh my God, they want me to go to the counties. I'm working at the lowest level of government. But what I really figured out in that experience, working with community, working with the local counties, is those are the people that have the part. If community wants it, community is against it or are against, that's when government moves. And that's when that's when things happen. So again, you know, this grassroots effort that we have through Hawaii Ag Foundation is this eat, think, drink platform. But again, yeah, government is going to support what community wants. And so it's a bottom up, not top down. Absolutely. Absolutely. Boy, we have touched on a million things, Danny. And you know what, I mean, I'm hoping that you can come back and bring in some of your, you know, producers and farmers and supporters and technology people. And there's so much to unpack here. I mean, just the issues that you and I have covered here, and we just skirted across the lake on them. There are so many shows that we could do about this. So I hope you come back. I want to hear more. I want to follow the action. I like Think Tech to be a source of information and inspiration about putting food at the top of the priorities. Thank you so much. Denise Yamaguchi, president, executive of the Hawaii Ag Agricultural Foundation, also the Food and Wine Festival, is it? Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Aloha.


Welcome back to another human-humane architecture show here in the dusky downtown Honolulu, which is our metropolis that is a coastal mountain-y metropolis that's very special. So Hawaiians call that Makai Malka. So in between the ocean and our real mountains, we have created an artificial mountain scape, and that is one of the biggest skylines in the United States after New York, Chicago, LA, of course. So this show is dedicated to relentlessly research about architecture that is trying to be as good as nature is, and we won't give up on that. And last show we had a new piece of architecture by Jim Kusakuma, his new rainbow-driving shoulder. So we're not going to go into another typology, into the high-rise typology, as you can tell. The building we're actually sitting in. And our expert today is our hero of this new show because he had the most. For the last show we had about a couple of weeks ago, you already had 220 clicks and three likes. So this is Soto Brown, Bishop Museum historian. Welcome back. Thank you for having me. Nice to be here. And we have to say, immediately after the show, the last show had poured out of us to say, we've got to do another one. That's right. We have so many ideas. So we choose this one here. We want to jump right in. Before we talk about the building, we're going to talk about the architect, so the creator of the building, and we can get the first picture. So who is that guy? Well, you tell me because actually I'm not that familiar. I do know that that's the space needle on the left, which was created for the Seattle World's Fair, and which in 1962, which I went to and I got to go in the space needle. But the space needle was the famous first, it was the one, it was the rotating restaurant that got the most publicity at that time. And if you ever watched the Jetsons cartoon show, I don't know if you did in Germany, but we did in the USA, the space needle was something that appeared a lot in the backgrounds of that show because it was the thing of the future and we were all going to be living in buildings like the space needle at some point. It didn't quite happen that way. You tell us about the architect. This is interesting because it's kind of your forgiven for not remembering because if it would have been Frank Lloyd Wright, if it would have been Lou Kahn, we wouldn't have forgotten it. And that's a good thing because it gets us to the first point. It wasn't what we would call today a boutique architect or an avant-garde architect. It was actually who many consider America's most commercial architect. And his name was John Graham. And John Graham is the architect of that particular building we're talking about. And he had actually prototyped the revolving rooftop flying saucer slash restaurant for the next year to become world famous. But it was prototyped in our tropical metropolis of Honolulu. And that's little known and little remembered. Correct. And so we go maybe to the next picture. Let's look at our next picture. That shows us the urban fabric. We were just before the show talking about a picture I was trying to find and not finding or wasn't successful. But here is actually it gets close to that because this is the building with a red arrow obviously. So no one will overlook it. Correct. Now I think the interesting thing is that as also we were talking about beforehand, the Alamoana building, which is what we're talking about today, is part of the Alamoana shopping center. And I believe certainly at the time that this was constructed. Let me just back up a little bit. Alamoana shopping center, the first phase opened in 1959. Soon after that was opened, construction started on the Alamoana building, the high rise. I think it's very rare and probably this could be one of the few occasions where a shopping center constructed a high rise as part of the complex. Then in 1966, the second phase of Alamoana opened. And so it became a shopping center that was horizontal with one vertical high rise attached to it or as part of it. And that is pretty much as I say unique. And that picture perfectly portrays that. And this picture is very cool because this is a mid-1960s postcard that shows the Alamoana building on the left in the distance. And the foreground on the right is part of a sculptural fountain that was built at one end of Alamoana when it first opened in 1959. And it has this tile work on it. It's very typical of 1959. And it's interesting because it had a Hawaiian theme. There were Hawaiian names, Hawaiian phrases attached to this fountain. So it sort of had a historical, mythical basis to acknowledge that this is in the Hawaiian islands and part of Hawaiian culture.  This picture we have to give credit to our friend Don Hivert, who had lots of copies of this floating around on the internet. But he took a really high resolution picture of the actual postcard. So thank you Don for that. And if we go to the next picture that actually shows sort of the spectacle, the crown, so to speak, of that building under construction and its context in the back. Yeah, and so we can see very clearly here, and this is interesting because this is a helicopter photograph. So there were no drones in 1960 and 61. So this picture was taken from a helicopter hired by the construction, you know, the company or the contractor. It shows the La Ronde restaurant under construction on the very top of the Alamoana building. And by the way, that building is also called 1441 Capulani because I think that's its official name. And then in the background you can see Diamond Head. Well, La Ronde was a rotating restaurant and the whole point was you had dinner or whatever for, usually took an hour to turn around. There it is. So that was your view of this beautiful vista. So La Ronde really was something to go to because it was something to look at. I mean, in lots of other places I can't imagine you would have had the view. As you said, we've got a Maoka view of the mountains. We've got a Makai view of the ocean. We've got a beautiful vista for this 360 degree view. And today, well, La Ronde is no longer functioning as a restaurant. It's still there present and Martin got to go up there and view it. But you can see that today Diamond Head is completely obscured by high rises. So the view now would be nothing like what it was back in 1961. No, that picture, I had a chance to be up there. The gentleman to the right was my oldest son, Joey, and we had the chance to go up there. And it's almost unbelievable how you talk about the prime sort of economics of real estate and how they have been exploding and how can such a space basically be empty, can be abandoned. There is the reactivation of the little sibling of that, which is in Kawakawa Avenue, which is called the top of Waikiki. And that just got recently reanimated, reactivated. And it's really a hot spot where people go. But for some odd reason, in this case here, and La Ronde, we have to go back. I mean, you grew up here, so you know this from your old childhood memories, which you will share also about the main part of the building later. But this was a location, this was an event. I mean, Talking Cool, that's why we named the show The Cool. And I actually should have said The Cool List Commercial Classic. Because this was top notch. This was America at its best as a total piece of artwork. And it's not only for local residents to go there, but this is also at the time already a tourist destination. So you've got a market of people who are from outside who are going to want to take this 360 degree view thing, as well as people who lived here. And just as with everything when it first opens up, you want to go see it. And number seven proves that pretty, because some celebrities obviously helped to promote that as well. Number seven is that picture with gentlemen, you know, and he's in love. And they're up there. And you said before, you know, this was the space age. This was going, you know, shooting people on the moon. You know, some debate about what we don't know about all these people. But this was the way to basically show excellence and a culture that is superior and can do all these things. And it's also to show that technology is there. Technology is capable of taking us to a greater, brighter future. And at that time period, you have to remember, people were really believing technology was saving the world. And in a lot of ways it was. There were a lot of things that were improving. But at the time, 1960, we're just seeing like the future is so bright we've got to wear shades because technology is saving us. And here's a rotating restaurant to prove it. And you, you segwayed us into, into the other cool part of the building, which is picture age shows actually a construction picture here. So there's this plinth with these breeze blocks. I'm going to say hi to my friend and colleague Lance Walters, who's doing great work with the students to think about that tradition as well. I think he's, hasn't touched with you guys as well to potentially, I mean, this is a whole different story. And we probably should even get Lance here and talk about that. I think you should too. But what we want to talk about is actually sort of that. We call that traditionally, that's the plinth. And we talk about the shaft that's in the background. And then we talk about the crown, which we have already, which is the flying saucer. But if we get to the next picture, this picture was, was the raw structure. But something is happening here. What, what, what happens there? This is again part of technology. Here's technology saving us. The Alamoana building had a very interesting exterior, which consisted of, and you will see in a, in a few minutes, what we're talking about, vertical louvers, which moved according to the position of the sun. So in this photograph on the left, you can see those louvers have already been installed, actually on the right too, but they're open. They're in a different position. So this is the louver system in, as it's being created. And next picture, please, we see actually the louvers, how they are being brought on side. So you can see them on the right there. They even have these sort of fin shaped, you know, elliptical kind of, kind of profile. Very much like airspace technology, airspace thinking. Correct, correct. This is high tech, right? Right, and they were mounted vertically. So you're seeing them lying down horizontally, but on the exterior, when they were in use, they were vertical, mounted at the top and the bottom, and they could pivot and turn in whatever direction was necessary. And the next picture actually demonstrates that. I took that, I noticed that first when you had worked and helped here, when the mall got expanded, there was an obligation to sort of keep the memory intact and there was an exhibit. We just saw the principal of the firm of Mason Architects walking by when we were preparing for the show outside. So Mason Architects were doing this construction fence exhibit. They totally froze me.  Because the building now we have to say, so the building was, maybe at the end of the show, people agree it was the coolest building. It is not anymore, but our pitch will be it could be again. Correct. The reason why it's currently not anymore is that somewhere in the early 90s, the facility manager, and this is me guesstimating, and maybe I'm wrong and I'll let myself be corrected, but people came and said, well, this is technology and you always got to grease and oil and get it maintained. So this is sort of maybe too much pain in the butt. Why would you take these things off and we just beef up air conditioning in the building? And then, and this is my other guess that, and I have, you know, my dentist at 20% of the island's dentist population is in the building. You said your dentist as well, right? He actually told me that the architect, the record of their renovation, wasn't quite sure himself about what they did instead. What they did instead is a little whimsical horizontal louvers that everyone in architectural environmental classes, 101, understands something that's not even the foot deep, doesn't even work to the south. That's why our hats are caps. You know, the lid is significantly longer proportionally than our face. If you do this to the west or the east, it doesn't work at all. So this is just decoration, so the building wouldn't look like too naked, right? I was just going to say that the original louvers actually were functional, and I think what's on there now is just decoration, so it's not just a plain block. And this is the picture we're looking at right now is an artist's view of the building, not necessarily its accurate appearance, but it does give you a feeling of what the building looked like. And those louvers, you know, as you said, they're no longer in use. I am sure that they deteriorated in various ways. The mechanism to keep them running probably gave out, and rather than trying to redo this entire exterior of the building with new louvers, they said, let's just take it all off, and also too, we were talking about, it, quote, modernizes the building. You take off that original 1960 exterior, and you have a building that looks more up-to-date, and if you are looking for tenants, that's something that's a benefit for a lot of tenants. Oh, yeah, look how modern it is, and it's all cleaned up and everything. Okay, we're going to take a short break and then continue that exciting story about the coolest commercial classic in Honolulu. See you in a minute. Aloha. My name is Richard Emory, host of Kondo Insider. More than a third of Hawaii's population live in some form of association. Our show is all about educating board members and owners about their responsibilities and obligations and providing solutions for a great association. You can watch me live on Thursdays, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. each week. Aloha. Hi, I'm Donna Blanchard. I'm the host of Center Stage, which is on Wednesdays at 2 o'clock here on ThinkTech. On Center Stage, I talk with artists about not only what they do and how they do it, but the meat of the conversation for me is why they do it, why we go through this. A lot of us are not making our livings doing this, and a lot of us would do this with our last dying breath if we had that choice. And that's what I love to talk to people about. I hope you enjoy watching it, and I hope you get inspired, because there's an artist inside you, too. Join us on Center Stage at 2 o'clock on Wednesdays. Bye. So we're back to Honolulu's coolest commercial classic here with the Soda Brown from the Bishop's House. You mean I'm the coolest commercial classic? Always, always. Alright. Okay, me and the building we're talking about. You haven't been stripped naked, like Eli, as the project we're talking about. My louvers didn't are still functional. Very good, very good. So let's talk about what's so fantastic. Let's go back to that picture, 12, please. Because what we see, again, is this sort of illusion of the building or this sort of aspiration, what the building wanted to show. But actually, if you would have looked at the building at another angle, it would have looked slightly different. Why is that? Well, as you pointed out, the louvers were different, had different colors on different surfaces. So one side was a more gold color, the other side was a more plain aluminum color, so that as those louvers would have shifted, you would have seen a different appearance to the building. And again, how many other buildings have that? Exactly. They don't, they don't. So if we go to picture 13, which will only show for a fraction of a second, because it's so blurred, and I had to zoom in on another historic picture. But I allow myself to say, you know, the goal of the show to look for what's the closest to nature and architecture, that building might have actually been. And in an interesting way, it never wanted to look like nature, because nature is nature and architecture is architecture. But it was sort of understanding the principles of nature, of being biochlamatic, that shade is a characteristic, is a survival tool here in the tropics, and so it employed these mechanisms in a very high tech, in a very sort of, you know, space AG, Jetsons kind of a way. But if you look at that palm leaf, and the texture of it, and the louvers, and both are not static, both are dynamic, the wind makes the palm leaf swing, and the operation, the biochlamatic operation, met that building changed its perception. And please change that experience, that childhood experience when you saw your dentist in there. Right, and I was at the dentist, and I was probably about eight years old or something, and I saw the louvers actually moving, and was quite mystified as to what is going on, because I'm sure there had been publicity about it, but as a little kid, I didn't get it. And so to see these tall vertical things in front of the window start to move was really mystifying as to why are they doing it? And as an adult, I do understand. So here they are, and I think the same is like nature. We don't completely sort of scientifically or logically understand, you know, unless we're biologists, you know, we understand how everything works, but otherwise we're puzzled by nature in a positive way, right? It just touches us because of its perfection of performance. So it isn't form per se of form, and it isn't performing per se of performing. It's a blend of the two. Correct. And now here, this is the thing that you were talking about earlier, that there is a way, and this is a modern version of the same system that the Alamoana building originally had. And this is in England, I believe, Britain. Here are the same louvers, and they can turn and they can pivot, but it's probably today this same system could be done in a more reasonable fashion that would probably be longer lasting, possibly use less electricity, et cetera. And if they could do this in England, which doesn't have a heat problem, I've been there, I know it doesn't have a heat problem, that certainly this could be done in the Hawaiian islands as well. And it isn't just something to do because it's kind of quirky and fun. It actually has a function. So it isn't just decoration, as we were talking about. This actually does help the building function and it helps it be more functional for the people in it. So we're making a case or a pitch to sort of reverse the process, basically bring back, and I made some really, this is far out there, and I'm stretching myself, and especially regarding the Bishop Museum, I'm a background, I really want to be careful, but I compare the buildings just shared to a feather cape. That's a very thing very known to the culture here, right? Well, absolutely, but the point that you made, which I think is very true, if we get beyond the cape itself, but we talk about the bird that has the feathers, you made up the point that birds cool themselves off by putting up their wings or fluffing up their feathers because they can do that. If necessary, they can also put their feathers down to be more sleek and aerodynamic. So while the Alamona building was certainly not intentionally looking like a feathered cloak or bird, it still was using natural types of reactions for heating, cooling, et cetera. So I thought that was a really good point because it's true there is a natural component to this and there is a natural analogy to it. And you made a great point too before the show that you said, well, mid-century-wise, everyone was taken away by the beauty of our islands, but they did not try to even compete or compare themselves to nature. They were actually saying, well, we're leading the world and we can do stuff that's so stunning architecturally that it naturally will blend in and will be equal to the performance of nature. It's a spectacle of itself. In other words, we've got the mountains and the ocean, as you just said, we've got the sky, we've got clouds, but we also can build buildings that are of themselves are eye-catching. And so I think that's true and I think that this building was like that. I think that was one of the intentions. And one of the things that's very true about this well, we've got one more innovation to talk about, but after that, we can focus on how this building really was iconic and it's time. Okay, let's get this out of the way because this picture here is basically, this is me, the practicing architect, kicking in and having worked for commercial clients and working for them. So if Martin wants to go up and today sell to a client to make a facade, a building envelope, and another facade over it, good luck, Martin, because we live in a highly capitalized way and unfortunately that spirit of, you know, doing more for symbiosis of reasons is unfortunately gone, let's face it. But we can maybe still smuggle it in if we add a performative aspect. And the aspect is if by nature if a louver is shading, it's exposed to the sun. So if we take that long side of the louver and equip it with modern foldable take technology which is thin film PV that you can code on by the same time the building is reducing energy by being self-shaded so it doesn't overheat, the rest of energy it needs for, you know, lights and computers and maybe that little bit AC you can harvest yourselves. So we're saying we're taking this building that has sort of collective memory in the city and we're boosting it into the future because we're saying the nature of these clients, they want cool and they only want the biochlamatic cool if it's pop-culturally cool. That's our point. That's right. But again, the technology we were just saying, technology was seen as the savior of things. Here's a situation where it may not save us but it certainly is going to enhance things. It's going to make things better. So being able to generate your own electricity through an architectural element is a winning in both situations. I wish it was integrative to the system. So we're having to step aside a little bit about my locomomo membership and you being the historian where we would love to bring things back exactly the way they were but maybe if that is impossible, we've got to compromise if it's in an integrative way and not in a sort of attached way. Correct. And even if it isn't this particular building which we wish it was, it's still something that we can look forward to is something that is useful and it looks interesting. And as a motivation, let's use the rest of the show to bring a little bit back that collective memory we were talking about in the next picture. Okay. Where's that from? Okay. Well, this is from the film Blue Hawaii in 1961 and it's a kind of a distorted picture but Elvis... Because I took it that way. Because you took it that way on a TV screen but Elvis Presley is talking to his girlfriend, Joan Blackman, and down in the right-hand corner they're supposedly having a picnic on Tantalus. Down in the right-hand corner you can see the Olimwana building which at the time was in the midst of a long, large, flat open area. So it really stood out. Any time anybody took a picture or a film of Honolulu, there was that building right there prominently. And interestingly, this scene is where Elvis is saying he's going to become a tour guy because tourism is booming so much. Well, that was true for that time period. So as he's talking, in the background is one of the symbols of this economic growth. Amazing. Next year another Elvis movie came out that was a little reactionary and then there's this one here. Yeah, and this is a film called Girls, Girls, Girls. Now interestingly, this film is set in sort of a mythical, unidentified location because he had just been in Blue Hawaii. They didn't want to put him in another Hawaii-based film. So they never really specify where this place supposedly is that he's a boat captain. But in this scene right here, you can clearly see there's our Olimwana building in the background. We caught them on that one. Oh yeah, we did. I thought because they weren't intending to show that and it goes by so fast so they didn't want that. Yeah, but we see it anyway. And we're all in some pop culture. And there is Thomas Magnum, star of the television series Magnum PI, which replaced Hawaii 5.0 in the 1980s as the most popular Hawaii-based TV series. And in the background again, there's our Olimwana building because you couldn't escape it when you were filming or photographing. They didn't want to. They didn't want to. There was no reason to. The opposite. But also too, in the opening sequence of the original Hawaii 5.0 series, there are two, one or two shots that are very difficult to identify, but it's a very quick zoom towards the blue neon that was around the edge of La Ronde. So in addition to Magnum, who we just saw, you can also see a little bit of La Ronde in the opening of Hawaii 5.0. So there's our iconic building right there. Perfect. Speaking of iconic building, we have a minute left for the show. There's one building that could motivate us for our case since we can bring up number 19. This is the building that could be a motivation, right? There it is. Because that has been transitioned from almost being demolished and then thanks to Dean Sakamoto and others having told Howard, use this as a prime piece that you want to keep and you can use it to your advantage to promote, right? Right. And they did. And they put their showroom in there. And a lot of the ground floor is this very high-end Howard Hughes Corporation showroom of here are the buildings we're going to be building. And I'm very grateful it got kept. And I think it looks fabulous. It looks great. So that being said, the last picture is going to be our final pitch picture to General Growth Properties who is the owner of the building. And our propositions is just bring back La Ronde. It's not rocket science. That thing must have been running on an electric. More high-tech technology wasn't around. So it was always low-tech. So that's easy to bring back. Correct. Again, it would be, it always was a unique, wonderful experience. It was something that people enjoyed. If it was possible, I tell you, I'd go back there. And they may not have a round menu the way they did in the original, but why not, you know? It's a round building, a round menu. Exactly. With that, so we're going to bring it back. Thank you very much for having been here. We have already lined up a couple of new shows. So be excited about that. Thank you very much. You're welcome. You're welcome. Awesome show. Next Tuesday, early evenings for another round of human-human architecture. Thank you.


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A trial of Mbattu Nollywood actor, Ola Rewadju, Omeen Ka, aka Baba Ejeshah at the Liga Special Offences Court in Ikeja, scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, has been adjourned to September 27. The trial was adjourned due to the long vacation of judges. Both parties involved in the matter, Baba Ejeshah and Princess, and other councils were not in court. Only journalists and few supporters who were unaware of the adjournment were seen around the court premises. At the last sit-in, Justice Uluwatu'i, Taiwan, joined the matter to August 11 and 12 for continuation of the trial. Baba Ejeshah has reportedly returned to acting and is making comedy skits after his two million-hour bill was granted.