Building Potential in Pacific Rim Topic of Maui Conference

Potentials for residential real estate construction in Hawaii and the Pacific Rim nations will highlight a four-day Pacific Basin Development Conference starting Aug. 26 at the Maui Inter-Continental Hotel at Wailea, Maui.

The sessions will benefit the Southern California Building Industry Assn.’s educational fund and are sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.

Joint-venture projects with Japanese firms, experiences of Hawaiian-based builders and developers, the existing market ranging from affordable housing to $1-million resort condominiums, and conversion of a Philippine Islands slum housing for the poor will be agenda items, according to Joan Heid, conference coordinator and retail and general display advertising manager for the classified department of The Times.

Speakers will include executives from the Japanese investment field who are now courting American developers to form joint ventures; George E. Isaacs, Hawaii-based real estate investor and developer who has developed projects worldwide since the late 1950s, and Norman Dyer, president of Gentry Co., Hawaii’s largest residential builder.

Others are Bud Wagner, Wailea Point Development Inc.; Donna Groth, Blackfield Development Co., a subsidiary of Presley Hawaii; Karl Bergheer, Bergheer Co., and Bruce Etherington, chairman of the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Hawaii, and a fellow of the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand, will describe a new building system using concrete blocks, which, he said, withstood an earthquake of 7.3 magnitude on the Richter scale.

Details are available from Torri Carreon at The Times, 213/237-5000.