HAWAII: Fantasy Isle

Trade winds blow across desolate lava beds and funnel up the slopes of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea and the sky smolders with the sun’s final flame. It is here, along the peaceful Kohala Coast, that Hawaii’s sunsets are legend; few places on earth are more haunting. Except for the fiery glow of lava during near-forgotten eruptions, the stretch of shoreline between Kailua-Kona and Mauna Kea has been left untouched through the centuries.

It was during an earlier visit that these words were written, words that no longer ring true. While the sea and sky remain blue as ever and rainbows still bend across the earth, the Kohala Coast is awakening and this once-undisturbed corner of the Big Island will never be quite so peaceful again.

One man is responsible for this new beginning, the developer of what promises to be the largest destination resort in the world, one featuring lagoons, lakes and waterfalls that will stretch over once-barren, lava-encrusted earth that previously rejected nearly all life.

When it opens next year the new low-rise Hyatt Regency Waikaloa will offer 1,244 rooms in three buildings facing nearly a dozen man-made islands, lakes, lagoons and waterfalls. Deer will peer from forests. Exotic birds will make their voices heard, swans will glide across lakes, and peacocks will strut alongside waters boiling with porpoises, manta rays and tropical fish.

It is the fantasy of Christopher B. Hemmeter, the entrepreneur who built the Hyatt Regency in Waikiki and the enormously successful Hyatt Regency at Kaanapali Beach on Maui. Still, the Maui project will be dwarfed by Hemmeter’s new development at Waikaloa where eventually five hotels numbering 6,000 rooms will be surrounded by five golf courses spread across hundreds of acres.

The first hotel--it’s scheduled to open early next year--will be like entering Disneyland with the Pacific pounding at the door. A Japanese restaurant will face a lake; guests will dance in a disco and find themselves dwarfed beneath the world’s largest atrium. They’ll ride horse-drawn trolleys and air-conditioned trams featuring cocktail service.

Rising in a sea of black lava, the Hyatt Regency Waikaloa promises to be an oasis unto itself. And all it is costing Hemmeter is loads of cash, thousands of truckloads of topsoil, tons of seed and nearly half a million bucks worth of trees.

At Waikaloa, honeymooners and other romantics will ride gondolas across lagoons of an evening; by day they’ll snorkel and windsurf among schools of tropical fish in a man-made lagoon with coral and antique anchors scattered on the sandy bottom.

Others will paddle to a grotto bar in a one-acre swimming pool fed by waterfalls. Besides golf and tennis, guests will saddle up for rides up to Mauna Loa and ski down Mauna Kea. Hemmeter’s oasis will be a jungle of palms and banyans along with forests of hau and bamboo and gardens ablaze with African tulips, plumeria, hibiscus and poinciana.

Doing business in this super-resort will be nine restaurants and 13 cocktail lounges; columns five stories high will support an immense trellis. Says Hemmeter: “Julius Caesar never saw anything like it.”

Hemmeter figures the construction will figure out to $260,000 per guest room, meaning that Waikaloa will be a resort for the affluent vacationer. Or others who’ve saved a lifetime for one grand and glorious fling.

Surveying the peaceful scene between Mauna Kea and Kailua-Kona, Hemmeter predicted that one day the entire Kohala Coast will be lined with hotels, homes and condominiums, a disappointing prospect for environmentalists and others who recall the island as a wildlife refuge, a peaceful retreat where an old island hand, Johnny Peacock, once buzzed wild goats in his single-engine airplane.

To old Hawaiians who have spent their lives on the Kohala Coast, Waikaloa is a moment to mourn.

Still, if the Hyatt Regency Waikaloa promises to be a show place on the Big Island, Hemmeter has even more grandiose schemes for his newest resort on Kauai. In a $95-million deal, Hemmeter bought the old Maui Surf on Maui and the Kauai Surf on Kauai, both to be operated by Westin Hotels (the Maui property reopens in August with still more man-made lagoons, waterfalls and other Hemmeter touches, while the Westin Kauai will welcome guests beginning in September).

Bigger than Disney’s Epcot Center, the Westin Kauai will be a $360-million attraction spread across 580 acres between the airport at Lihue and Kalapaki Beach on Kauai’s Nawiliwili Bay.

At the Westin Kauai, Hemmeter is adding more rooms as well as a lake with a 10-mile shoreline around which nearly 100 outrigger canoes and five 40-passenger launches will deliver guests to three shopping villages peddling high-fashion jewelry, clothing and art. On Kauai, already world-famous for its beauty, Hemmeter is creating more waterfalls, fish ponds and grottoes as well as a 2.1-acre reflecting pool with marbled sculpture.

In addition, dozens of carriages like the one that delivered Prince Charles and Princess Di to their wedding will spin through jungle-like gardens. A herd of 100 Clydesdale horses that will pull them are being flown to Hawaii in a converted 747 jet.

Besides the carriages, the Clydesdale teams will pull a Budweiser-style dray wagon on daily deliveries to 10 restaurants and lounges, including the Inn on the Cliff with its sweeping view of the bay.

But there’s more. Swans will glide across a huge reflecting pool, and Hemmeter has ordered eight life-size marble horses handcrafted in China from a solid piece of marble in a dazzling array of fountains and fantasy. Elsewhere, an entire island created of marble will be a showplace for seven stone turtles.

Without question, Hemmeter’s world matches Disney’s world. Brides will swoon while traveling in a pure white carriage to a chapel by the sea. Later, the newlyweds will be dispatched by boat, carriage or elevator (their choice) to a restaurant perched on the cliff.

A paddle-wheeler the size of Disneyland’s could be floated in the resort’s immense swimming pool where waters will churn with five Jacuzzis. Guests will take on food and grog in 17 restaurants and lounges and others will gather in a spacious ballroom capable of accommodating a couple of thousand conventioneers.

Taking a cue from California’s La Costa, Hemmeter’s kingdom will provide herbal and luffa wraps along with medical checkups. Sotheby’s will do auctions twice a week, and wildlife will populate Hemmeter’s man-made jungles--boar, deer, monkeys and exotic birds.

Set in the middle of the resort will be nearly a dozen tennis courts. Hemmeter’s Kauai kingdom promises to be the most talked-about resort in the world. No resort, it is argued, will match it.

In addition to hotel guests, an estimated 1,000 visitors a day will go joy riding in the horse carriages and cruise the lagoons in a fleet of outriggers.

With 2,200 employees, Hemmeter’s fantasy island will be the single biggest employer on Kauai.

At sunset a “warrior” on horseback will be dispatched to set hundreds of torches ablaze, this to be followed by a boat parade and a twice weekly fireworks display.

In one corner of Hemmeter’s world, guests will be entertained at a bar complete with a grand piano set above the reflecting pool. And there’s the Japanese restaurant that will feature a waterfall and a 12-foot-high Buddha peering from a jungle hiding place.

To produce his Polynesian playground, Hemmeter is leveling hills and creating others. Maintaining the resort’s two golf courses alone will cost $2 million a year. Another fortune is going into a mosaic promenade that will border Kalapaki Beach. And there will be helipads, a sound and light show, grottoes and hot springs.

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Chris Hemmeter, a youthful 47, arrived penniless in Hawaii in 1960 after graduating from Cornell. Following a stint with Sheraton, he moved on borrowed money into the restaurant business and went on to build the $80-million Hyatt Regency Waikiki at Hemmeter Center, King’s Alley (a shopping complex) and the $100-million Hyatt Regency Maui. Hawaii calls him Polynesia’s Horatio Alger.

At the Hyatt Regency Maui, Hemmeter created waterfalls, lagoons and a dizzying 1 1/2-story slide that swept into what was Hawaii’s biggest swimming pool. Hemmeter imported swans and flamingos and before long his hotel occupancy was running nearly 100% year round. Hemmeter says his formula is simple: He builds resorts that are fun for vacationers.

After selling the Maui property and the Waikiki Hyatt, he gambled his fortune on the Westin Maui on Kaanapali Beach (more swans, more grottoes, more waterfalls and a pool twice the size of the one at the Hyatt Regency), along with his mega-resorts on the Big Island and Kauai.

One Honolulu hotelier predicts that Hemmeter will fail on the Big Island,insisting that the new Waikaloa resort is simply too extravagant. Others say that Waikaloa, as well as Hemmeter’s other show places, will set new trends.

Peter Fithian, president of Lei Greeters of Hawaii, is in awe of Hemmeter. “No one in the Pacific can compete with him; he is selling fantasy.”

Ed Hogan of Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays describes Hemmeter as “ambitious, a dreamer, a nice guy” and applauds what he is doing “because he’s doing it with class.”

In 1986 an industry publication declared that Hemmeter had done “more to stimulate growth and interest in Hawaii than any single individual in recent memory.” Besides Hawaii, Hemmeter is developing other projects in the Orient, the South Seas, Florida and the Caribbean.

Tempers His Ambition

He says he tempers his ambition with concern for Hawaii’s people. On Kauai he delayed the closing of the Kauai Surf until the new Sheraton and Hilton hotels opened to provide jobs for the Surf staff.

Several years ago Hemmeter moved his family into a 12-bedroom home with 16 baths and a disco. Presently he’s completing a $20-million home on Oahu featuring two kitchens, a bowling alley, a theater, a beauty shop for his wife and a sauna and Jacuzzi for himself. This along with waterfalls and lagoons.

Only recently Hemmeter took possession of a remodeled 727 jet featuring a kitchen, bedroom and an office to carry his staff on business trips. In addition, he jets frequently to visit Jimmy Carter, whose Presidential Library he designed in Georgia.

The Old Hawaii

So much for the charismatic Chris Hemmeter. What of Hawaii, the old Hawaii of undeveloped beaches and sugar and pineapple plantations?

These islands had their beginning 40 million years ago. First there was a convulsion. Deep down, the ocean split apart, then slowly, relentlessly the violence worked its way up, lava building toward the daylight on top.

The ocean steamed. From the very bottom of the Pacific, thousands of feet down, the convulsions continued. Staggering eruptions poured forth lava for long, lonely, unfathomable years. Then one day an island appeared--the visible beginning of Hawaii. After untold centuries the islands of Hawaii became lush and green.

Millions of years later those who would populate Hawaii set out in canoes, probably from Tahiti, crossing 2,000 miles of lonely Pacific to reach these shores. Now others have arrived--vacationers who jet island to island and who soon will discover the new mega-resorts of Chris Hemmeter’s Polynesian world.

The sun sets on a dream grown old.