REAL ESTATE : Hawaiian Architects Win Contract for $700-Million Australian Project

Wimberly Whisenand Allison Tong & Goo Architects, a Hawaiian firm with its mainland office in Newport Beach, said it has won the design contract for a $700-million office, apartment and casino project in Brisbane, Australia.

The company said it has also won a design contract for a hotel and retail project of about half that size in Seoul, Korea.

Chairman M.B. Tong said the Australian project was the company’s largest project so far.

WWAT&G;, as it calls itself, isn’t the only Hawaiian firm to invade first the Far East market and then the continental U.S. market with an office in Orange County: Media Five Ltd., a Hawaiian interior design firm, has an office in Costa Mesa.

The Australian contract, awarded to a consortium of Australian developers by the Queensland state government, celebrates Australia’s 1988 bicentennial. WWAT&G; had jointed the developers in their bid for the project, which also includes a performing arts center and a high-rise world trade center on an island in the Brisbane River.

The project is to redevelop the World Expo 88 site in Brisbane after the exposition closes later this year.

WWAT&G; has designed hotels around the South Pacific for more than 40 years.

But “this is the biggest thing we’ve encountered so far,” said Tong from Hawaii. “We’re still not sure how much it will mean in billings for design and planning work.”

Meanwhile the Newport Beach office is thriving, said WWAT&G; executive Gerald Allison. It has expanded to about 70 people and now accounts for about half the company’s annual $16 million in billings.

The office opened in 1981 and the company’s first prominent U.S. project was designing the Ritz-Carlton resort hotel in Laguna Niguel.