 Think Tech Away, civil engagement lives here. Hello everybody, welcome again to Think Tech Tourism 101. I'm Mufi Haneman. Our guest today is Rick Eggin, the president of the Waikiki Improvement Association, an organization that dedicates itself to preserving and enhancing the way of life, improving the way of life, I should say, in Waikiki for our residents, our employees, and of course the visitors that come to Waikiki. Rick, welcome to our show. Good morning, Mufi. Thank you for inviting me. You know, there's so many things to talk about, because you and I go way back. And certainly, we've had a lot of experiences. But I need to ask you the proverbial local school question. So what high school are you in? I come from beneath the waving tassels of Waipahu High. You know, that's always a great question to ask of Rick, because no one can believe that he actually went to Waipahu. Explain that. Well, we lived in Pearl City. And in those days, there was no Pearl City High School. And so I took the bus to Waipahu High School every day. And it was interesting, because Waipahu was kind of the local school in the area. And there was a lot of military kids would come in, and they'd take one look at the student buddy, and they'd transferred to Radford or Campbell or Lelehua. But I just enjoyed it, and I stayed there. So I think I was one of about a half a dozen Howellies in my senior class. You really stood out there. I did. Well, I can tell you folks that Rick hasn't forgotten his roots. In fact, he and I, along with other visitor industry stakeholders, are working very hard. And the principal, I think, is one of the best in the state, Keith Hayashi, Waipahu High School. And when Governor E. Gates talks about early college education, it really started at Waipahu High School. It was a very innovative principal. And so Rick, being a graduate of Waipahu High School, is helping us work with him to enhance their tourism academy and culinary academy. So great things to talk about that in coming shows. But today, it's all about Rick Eggett and what he does in Waikiki. Rick, you've had an outstanding career in terms of the kind of jobs that you've held, everything from being the director of the Office of State Planning, to being the deputy director of DBID, working with some tall guy, the director back there. Tell us about some of the highlights of that and how that has prepared you for this very important job that you have now as the head of the Waikiki Improvement Association. Well, when I started with the state, I actually first worked under Murray Towell when he was the director there. And then Murray. Also a former president of the Hawaii Hotel Association. He then left that job to go to the Hotel Association. And that's when we got our new director. Mufi came in, moved over from the Office of International Relations. And so that began a great partnership. I think we worked really well together as director and deputy. And then from there, Seiji Naya came in during the next administration, which was the Governor Kaitano's administration. And because it was uncertain whether Kaitano was going to win that election, remember it was kind of close, the legislature had budgeted down. Instead of the three deputies that you had, there was only one under Kaitano. So I was the single deputy. And I remember one of the things I remember from that is when I first sat down with Seiji, I said to him, so I said, how often do you want to meet? I says, with Murray Towell, it was once a month. With Mufi, it was once a week. How often do you want to get together? He goes, every day. But one deputy. So we not only met every day, but most days we actually met in the morning to talk about our day and in the evening to talk about what happened during the day. So he was a good boss, too. He was. He was a great man. And it's really sad that he's gone. He's left us. And he did the Office of State Planning. So then I went to the Office of State Planning from there under Kaitano. Because one of the major things that he wanted me to engineer really was the Barber's Point conversion. So we needed a plan that would cover what was going to take place in Barber's Point. And one of our key objectives was to maintain the second airport there because we wanted to take some of the small plane traffic out of Honolulu International. And you're very Akamai in this area, too. But we needed to build a plan that also had a lot of benefit to the community. Because the community, it's a sacrifice for the community to have an airport in the community, because you have planes over at all the time. So we wanted to make sure that we built into the plan a lot of community benefit. And then we also were one of the objectives, I think, of every administration of in recent times has been to build up the Department of Hawaiian homelands. And so a lot of the land was also allocated to the Department of Hawaiian homelands. So it's been slow going. And I think we engineered a good plan. The problem is nobody's ever really put enough money into it to make it work the way it was supposed to. But hopefully over time, that'll happen. You know, Rick is being very modest, because he's glossing over something that he was the point person for when I was a director of DBED. And that was the whole Hawaiian airline situation. Governor Waihe at that time was very concerned about Hawaiian airlines having some financial problems. And so Rick and I huddled in our once a week meetings. And at that time I think it was like every day we were talking about this issue. Yes, yes, yes. Because it was very important. And we came up with a loan guarantee program that really staved off the creditors and allowed Hawaiian airlines to regroup if we worked. And it was a strong positive message that the state would guarantee its existence. And Rick was point person on that particular side. I need to make sure that people know. That was a very interesting project. We learned a lot about how airlines were run. Exactly. And how little they actually have in terms of real assets. It's their business that is the asset, really. And when it comes down to it, and when you look at what Hawaiian Airlines has done for the state since then, as you pointed out, I've really happy that we worked so hard to keep them alive. And it was interesting, because at the time, Aloha Airlines was strong, and Hawaiian Airlines was weak. The situation later reversed. But I think the result of keeping Hawaiian Airlines in business has just reaped a lot of rewards for the state of Hawaii. And it wasn't just a matter of propping up a weak business. I think that they needed that time. The business plan, the business model was valid. It's just that they needed a break from their creditors. The loan guarantee was never actually executed. But the fact that the loan guarantee was there bought them the time they needed with their creditors. And as a result, they were able to come back strong. That was the beauty of it. And Kudos to Governor Waihe. And also Mitch Dolié was running Hawaiian Airlines at that time. It was great to work with. So, Rick, let's talk about this present job of Waihe Improvement Association. For a person listening that may not know a whole lot about your organization, why don't you drill down the mission of WIA and how long you've been there? Well, WIA was created back in 1967. And it was really created as a reaction by the business community to the rapid development that was taking place in Waikiki at the time. And as a result, they were concerned that it was very haphazard, that there was no real planning or zoning going on. And what came out of that originally was the Waikiki Special District at the time. And the whole idea was to try to channel that growth in a more positive way than just the haphazard fashion that it had taken to date. I think it was in the end, we found out that a lot of those efforts, well-intentioned, were kind of stifling because they tried to force the reality of business development into a theoretical best case. And as a result, after that time from 1976, when the WSD went into place, there was about 30 years where almost no major redevelopment took place in Waikiki. At the time, nobody really worried about it because there had been so much development up to that point. But after 30 years, everything was really grinding down. And that's when I think our paths crossed again because I was on the council at that time, and we said, you know what? We need to revitalize this area here. And I always point to Lour Street as how it used to look, and thanks to the amendments that we made to the Waikiki Special District Design. I was the planning chair of the council at the time. We said, basically said in layman's term, is allow them to go up to create more open space on the bottom, which is why you see that lovely beach walk now at the outdoor hotels. Resorts has been. I'll always remember. One of the big issues at that time was the Waikiki was in such bad shape. There was some clamoring to create another HCDA type setup at Waikiki. And I remember this very clearly when the debate was before the city council. And there are some people who were really being obstacles, won't mention any names. And you stood up there and you said, you know, if we can't get this done, then we've abdicated our responsibility. The state should take it. And I think that was the turning point. I really think it was because I think everybody realized they needed to come to a compromise and move the bill forward, which it did. And it was really the beginning of what we call the revitalization of Waikiki. Let's talk about WIA itself. You're board of directors, your membership. You know, last night, you had a wonderful one for again, another annual meeting of yours. And lots of people came out, a lot of energy in there. And then you also give out annual awards. And they were beaming with pride, Bonnie Keabo of the Hyatt, for example, said, I now only won one. We won two awards for my resort. That's right. Some of that. Yeah, that was terrific. Hyatt won both a green award because they had been doing so much to build recycling and earth-friendly activities into their operations. They also won a cultural award because they hired one of the great ladies, a good friend of you and I both, Kuyipo Kumukahi, multiple Nohoku Award winner. And she has just created a tremendous cultural program at Hyatt. They're also one of the sponsors of the Kuhu Beach Hula program. That was something that had gotten started actually when I was still at D-bed. And it came out of the Waikiki Improvement Association. And originally, the city kind of took it over. In fact, I think it was during your administration. We took it up to every day for a while. Yes, we did. It's down to three times a day because we were always battling budget crunches. But I remember a mayor who ran on this. Nice, we have to do what we have to do. What's the term? We need to do need to have rather than nice to have. Need to have a nice to have, right? That's the term. So a lot of the things ended up working out differently. But I appreciate the fact. You brought in private sector parts. You did, right. I mean, for example, Sunset on the Beach, which was a great idea. And there are some administrations that come in and then they just want to do everything different than the other administration. And instead, I think you came in and you decided, we're going to do things better. And in the old administration, the Sunset on the Beach was run right out of the managing director's office. And then when you came in, we partnered on it. And you brought in private sector sponsors as opposed to city money. And it's still alive. It's limping along. We're looking for a longer term sponsor. Maybe if we get some changes going forward, we'll get that done. Great, well, and that's such an important part of what you do at WIA. Certainly, I talked about the way of life, the quality of life. But what I want to get to when we take a little break of pause for the cause, if you will, I want to come back and talk about some of the specific projects that you are working on each and every day that's making a difference in people's lives. Some of them what we call low hanging fruit. Others are high hanging fruit. And it's going to take some time. But I think the key of it is you working with organizations such as ours, Hawaii Logic and Tourism Association, VASH, HVCB, all the Waikiki stakeholders, HTA, to make sure that we're all on the same page. And as I said earlier at the outset of the program, it's not just for the visitors that come there. We're very much concerned about the residents as well as the workers. So we're going to take a short pause now for the cause. And when we come back, we've got Rick Eggit here, who is the president of the Waikiki Improvement Association. Every time there's an issue about Waikiki, you can bet that Rick Eggit will be at the forefront of it, because that's what he does. And what's nice about it, despite all these years that he's been there, he's still very passionate and excited as if it's where his first day on the job. We'll be back after this break. Hi, I'm Bill Sharp, host of Asian Review here on Think Tech Hawaii. Join me every Monday afternoon from 5 to 5.30 Hawaii Standard Time for an insightful discussion of contemporary Asian affairs. There's so much to discuss. And the guests that we have are very, very well informed. Just think, we have the upcoming negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the possibility of Xi Jinping, the leader of China, remaining in power forever. We'll see you then. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lo, and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body, and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means. Let's take healthy back. Aloha. We're back again with Rick Aged, proud graduate of White Powell High School here, president of the White Key Improvement Association. Thank you, Mufi. One of the things I wanted to talk about was, when we came into 2018, one of our big issues was we had some, and it kind of was brought to the forges recently because we had another incident, some fairly high profile criminal activities that took place in Waikiki. And we're always concerned because one of the major pluses for our destination is the low crime rate. And so when you have these high profile incidents take place, you want to make sure you jump on it right away so that you can maintain public confidence in the public safety. And you kind of brought a reprise of something that you had done like 20 years before. And we created a public safety conference. And I say we because you were the chair, our council member Trevor Ozal was the co-chair, but then also Waikiki Improvement Association, the Waikiki Business Improvement District Association, and I think Vaasht, we all worked together in creating this conference. And one of the major things that we did was you did, was bring the military involved because the military personnel had been involved in a lot of these major incidents. And a lot of good, I think, has come out of that work. We also involved a lot of the business establishments that kind of were in the prosecutor's office. Center of this, oh, and Keith kind of share on the prosecutor's office, absolutely. And HPD, of course, HPD was involved in a major way. So we brought all this major stakeholders together. And one of the things that's already in motion, that's definitely making, when you say the low hanging fruit, but the city, HTA, and the Business Improvement District Association have come together to fund additional cameras for Waikiki. We have, first of all, we have 10, but they weren't all working. So now all 10 are working. And there's a phase two that's already been funded. So they're already gonna begin the progress of putting additional security cameras around Waikiki. And I think that security cameras make a huge difference in terms of being a deterrent crime, helping us to solve crimes, getting on them right away. And I think HPD does a terrific job of doing that, jumping on all these crimes and making sure that the perpetrators are immediately brought to justice, prosecuting attorney's office, prioritizes making sure that they pay for their crimes. So I think that the system is not broken, but it definitely needs enhancements. And that's what we concentrated on. And we're gonna continue to do this going forward. We said that we didn't want it just to be a one-time confab that we bring people together. We're continuing to dialogue. We have a committee that's in place. And can't say enough about the wonderful support that's been given by Chief Ballard and Deputy Chief McCarthy. And certainly we want everybody engaged all the way. And as you mentioned, the military. And one of the new ideas that we brought to the forefront is getting a youth group in Waikiki, and in particular, the adult friends for youth. Because there's a lot of young people that are coming into Waikiki. And because of their interaction with the high schools, and dealing with many of these troubled youth, they're able to identify who they are and serve as additional eyes and ears to help the police department. I think, I mean, it wasn't, it didn't take a genius to figure out that one of our big problems in each of these major incidents, we had a lot of underage people involved in the problem. And so it was clear, there was clear that there was something needed to be addressed there. And I think that Chief Ballard, as soon as she came in, one of the things she did was reactivated a, I'm not sure the terminology for it, a youth division, basically, that worked with different youth gangs. And problem youths there, at-risk youth, maybe a better way to put it. And I was really impressed during that conference and we heard all of the programs that were in place to address at-risk youth. And of course these augments, the ambassadors of the law and the WBID and the fine work that they do. So yes, Rick is right, we need to be vigilant about crime. That's one of the features of why people come to Waikiki because they feel it's a safe and secure destination so we can never let our guard down. So let's talk about some other things that are happening with respect to your responsibilities there. You know, we've seen some nearscares of major man natural disasters that really would have wreaked havoc on Waikiki and you have been at the forefront of some of these issues in particular with the Alawai. Let's talk about that. Okay, that's one of my favorite issues as you know. I know. It's Rick Alawai again. So, but the key is, and one of the things that we've done and we've actually been doing it for about a couple of years now is we created what we call the Alawai Collaboration. And your organization's part of that. But all the major stakeholders, Kamehameha Schools, the University, the city, both the city and state sit at the table. And what the Alawai Association, Alawai Watershed Association, Karen Amais, an old friend of mine. And I think that the issue is that we want to work together as a community. And we partially actually did it when the Army Corps of Engineers flood control plan rolled out. Because we were all concerned that if we're going to spend that much money on the Alawai, we want to do more than just get flood control. Flood control is obviously critical. If we had received the impact of rain that they were hit with on Kauai and on the big island, we would still be getting rid of the water. That's how bad the situation could be. And then one of the major points of the collaboration is it's not just the flood control issue, it's the water quality and the environment. And there's a lot of things that you can do, and some of them are in the Army Corps plan, some of them need to be done in addition, that can address the situation. But the other big problem is that, and the reason they haven't been done yet is because both the city and state are reluctant to take on the maintenance and the operational things that it's gonna take to be done. So that's where we're actually looking at creating a civic or a community reinvestment district, something like our business improvement districts in Waikiki, but for the whole watershed that will concentrate, create a private nonprofit that will concentrate on providing that maintenance and that operational support to make it work. And we think that if you add that to the Army Corps' plan and some other improvements that we would work to bring about with the city and the state, we think that we can not only enhance the flood control portion of the plan, but also provide that water quality improvement and environmental improvement throughout the watershed. And there's a bunch of federal money that has been set aside for the Army Corps before in this plan. Right, there was $345 million, it was appropriated. Now, that $345 million actually includes the local share. It is really a proposal that is very favorable to the local partner, because the federal government would front the money and the state could then pay it back over 30 years. So at low federal government interest rates, if the state can get a better interest rate, obviously they can fund it on their own. But the idea is you don't have to wait for the money to come out of the state in order to move the project forward. It came in through an emergency funding that came out of the natural disasters that happened on the mainland. As a result, it's actually moving much faster, it surprised me actually, moving much faster than the normal Army Corps process. And as a result, the Army Corps is gonna begin public, along with the city and state, will begin public outreach soon and to talk about all the details of the plan and could begin some construction, some parts of the plan as early as late next year. Well, I'm glad to hear that, as you know, I was the mayor that had to preside over the 48 million gallons of raw sewage that spilled into the Alhuacanel. So I know how precious, how fragile that aspect is of Waikiki. So it's comforting and reassuring to know because we all know this, Rick, it's not a question of when we may be hit with a major disaster. And certainly, Alhuacanel could be very vulnerable if we're not gonna take some of the steps that you're working very hard on. And I think that hopefully all the near misses we had this year underlined to everybody in the community the necessity of moving forward. There's no such thing as a perfect plan. There's always gonna be things that we don't like about this plan or that plan. But we can't, this is too important for the community for us not to move forward on it. That having been said, I think we can make some changes that will enhance the plan, mitigate the plan. It's always been my position that, yes, the flood control is important, but we have to live with whatever we build 365 days a year. And so it should be something that creates other advantages for the community and certainly doesn't take away from the aesthetic value that we cherish. And I think that the lesson here too is to be proactive than reactive. When I was a customer, I kept saying that we were doing the nice to have and not the need to have and we neglected all the sewage infrastructure. So now the lesson learned there is we basically have come up to speed on it. We put the improvements in so that if it should ever happen again in terms of a major rainfall, we won't see that aspect of the city's infrastructure system go haywire as a result of it. And that's exactly what you're trying to do here. Be proactive as opposed to it hits and then whoa, what's the plan? What do we do? Where do we go from here? And that's what we're doing in Waikiki Beach. So back in 2015, we actually created a fund that the city collects for us. So we assess all the commercial property, not the residents, the commercial properties in Waikiki to put into a fund to match state money to restore and maintain Waikiki Beach. Very important. And I think that you talked about safety. The beach is also one of the key parts of what make Waikiki attractive. And we did a survey partnering with HTA a few years ago and then we updated it recently and over $2 billion a year of revenue is tied directly to the beach. In a minute and a half we have remaining here. Talk about what often troubles residents going to Waikiki and that is there's no parking. You've done some terrific things over the past year and a half working with the city council to bring in some traffic mitigation measures. Absolutely. We created something called a Transportation Management Association. They're done all through the mainland. They make them eligible for federal funds as well. The long-term idea is to create more parking and it's to improve the access to Waikiki, create more parking, regulate better our loading and unloading which tends to cram our streets at times and be able to work with the city by creating a fund. What we're gonna do is charge the businesses that load and unload in Waikiki a fee for just for Waikiki and that money will then go into enhancing Waikiki's ability to handle the traffic. Well you know Rick there's so much more to talk about. We didn't even touch the sidewalks there and the things that we're doing to keep. There was areas that are safe for our visitors and our residents like so. This is really Tourism 101 with WIA part one.