 Hi, good afternoon. This is Ricky Casady. Thank you for joining us. I'm particularly pleased at my guest because of a number of things. One, I knew the family. Two, she lives in Waikiki. Three, we see quite a bit of one another. But best of all, she does the same thing that I do. She deals with data and then she talks to developers about that or business people. And it's a real interesting interface. I enjoy the hack out of it. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing what I do. I know she does as well. She's also very good with the media. And I admire that. But best of all, well, two things. One, she wrote a book and writing is really hard. And I've been thinking about doing it and I started hers and I said, it looks simple because it's just matter of fact and straight. And if and when I do it, I'm going to blame her. And then the other great thing, probably, and this is a segue to you, Stephanie, is that we're of an age. We think we have a ton of experience. Some are repeating and some of those experiences extend what was into what might be. And we started our conversation by saying, you know, what's important? And as you go along in life asking what's important, it just doesn't stop. And what she's pointed to is esoteric and fundamental. It's infrastructure. And infrastructure counts. Now, Stephanie, I've gone all over the map. I've talked too much. Say something and welcome. Well, thank you for having me on your show. Thank you. So today you want to talk about basically three things I think we were talking about. We're going to talk about infrastructure and retail shopping of the future or currently and maybe office buildings. That's what's the future of those. So I guess what we'll start with is the easiest one is infrastructure. Hawaii needs to rebuild their infrastructure. And the rail is not the infrastructure that we need to be building. We need to be building renewing our bridges, our roads, our sewer system. Our sewer system at San Island is still at 1965 levels. The EPA find us. Now we're back to, well, we have time to do it. But meanwhile, the politicians are raising their salaries by 63%. And they're not doing what they need to do is to rebuild our infrastructure. And that's going to affect us down the line. People say, well, why are you moving from Hawaii? Why are people leaving from Hawaii? It's not just the lack of affordable housing. It's everything else and taxes. The second thing we can talk about is office building. It's, you know, two years ago, we talked, I was interviewed and I said, I said, you will never see another office building built in downtown Honolulu again. And the reporter kind of size got very wide. He said, really? I said, no, that's a, it's, it was waning before COVID. And now with COVID, it's a done situation. And people do not want to go into their offices. They want to do remote. We can all do more remote. I mean, there are people, unless you're a bartender and a chef that you get, you're entertaining and you're going to, and you're doing something for the overall people who are coming to see you, they get well paid, they're going to come to work. But people like you and I, you know, the old grogans of the world, we're not going to go every day to downtown Honolulu and pay $550 a month for a parking stall and $3.75 to get a cup of a bottle of water that you can get for 25 cents at Costco. And it's just, it's just too much now. And so those office buildings are going to go to what you always talked about is affordable housing. You're going to see, we've already seen one done, which was 1132 Bishop as apartments. We're now going to see 841 Bishop, which is Davey specific center, which is going to be converted half and half. You'll probably see another one announced another two years because that's infrastructure is in place. You can convert it for not as much money as building new. And you're going to be putting in new apartments or condominiums. The issue will be, will they be affordable, which probably not, but that will create more people downtown, which will maybe a little more shopping, which will renovate the area, which will revitalize it. And the last thing you want to talk about, particularly and wake you key is shopping. What's happening with shopping today? And, you know, the world has changed and is changing dramatically. Your brick and mortar are going to get smaller and smaller and smaller. Your, your Macy's, your old Liberty House stores, your Nordstrom stores, your needless market markup. All of those places are going to get smaller because people are shopping online and they will go to the brick and mortar to look at the product and maybe even try it on or buy it. But for the most part, they're going to be shopping online because you can get a better deal. So we know that shopping will continue because people like what they call it shopping entertainment, shopping, tainment, shopping, tainment is a word or retail therapy. And everybody loves retail therapy. They love to go down and have a, you know, go have lunch and then go shop and then talk and have a good time. But the thing that will be moving people through will be your phone. Your, basically your phone will be change is change the world. So when you go to Europe now, and when you go to Asia, you can buy your tickets, your, your, your fares on the bus and the subs and the trains. You can buy your food all by using your phone. And that is the way of the future. You are not going to have the high, can you help me find something by the associates? Because the cost of employees has gotten so high, you know, the government keeps trying to raise the minimum wage. And I understand what they're trying to do, but a minimum wage was never to be a living wage. It was to be a starting wage so that you could get into the workforce and work your way up into a living wage. But now this is, this is a new quote unquote, we have to make it a living wage. So it went from it's going to go within five years from what it was $10 to $20 or $21. Well, the average small business, even larger businesses can't afford that. So you're going to see more automation. And with that automation comes your phone. And so you're going to see a lot more automation, you're going to see a lot more smaller stores. And you guys see people running around like they do at Kahala Mall or they do it at Capilani, at Capileg and they're whatever that place is called, I can't remember them. Yeah, yeah. So you're going to see people walking around because they're going to want pizza, they're going to want a beer, they're going to want a soda for their kids. And but what's going to happen is a lot of the stores that you and I know your, your, your wares, your, your, your China wares or your kitchen wares or your, your clothing wares, they're going to go get smaller and not even be there. And what you're going to see is more entertainment. You're going to see more gyms, you're going to see more churches, you're going to see more bowling alleys. So like in Kahala, at Alamoana, they have that lucky strike thing where you can go and bowl and then eat. And then they just put in a planet fitness in Kahala Mall. And about four years before that, there was a restaurant upstairs where that was, and they put in a church. So these places are all going to be changing so that the community will still come to the shopping center. But it's not going to be the shopping center that you and I remember, or even people from 10 years ago, because it's not going to have as much to offer, but more community things, which will bring more people. And there'll be a lot of people looking for parking, but it's not going to be relatively wealthy for the developer or the landlord, because gyms, bowling alleys, churches do not pay that kind of money that you used to get from Tiffany's or Chanel or what happened. So those is what's happening. Those three components are what's happening right now that I see. And as the prospective developers go forward, they're going to have to look at their models and see how they can become successful with these new tenants. And it's going to be very expensive. I think we talked about it. I don't know if I think you and I talked about it, that there was a recent property that sold just for industrial space, a land in the airport area, and that was sold at $600 a square foot. So for people who don't understand what that means, it means basically that your supplier, your wholesaler, is going to have to rent his space for $5 a square foot, plus real property taxes, insurance, maintenance, and then that cost is going to have to go to the retailer for his supplies and to us. So you think about how that affects us and it means like milk or a gallon of milk here is what $6, $7, it's going to go to $10 or $11 and people are going to be crying, but you can't do anything because the cost has gone so high. We get the supply of land. We get to infrastructure. That thing of the downtown Douglas Emmett had 18% vacancy downtown. They were the biggest. They got unlimited in there to carve up a bunch of rectangles. Both are really great companies and if you've not walked through, you should do because what they did do is they solved some living problems in an office building by giving the new tenants a bunch of stuff. Now, let me shift to the retail thing. I find that absolutely fascinating. I totally agree. This is an experience led economy, especially at the high end and especially since we're a visitor industry. Our quality of life is due to our comparative advantage, all big fancy words saying people want to come here because it's nice and good weather, but they turned off the thing of shopping to bring back bags and now the shopping footprint sinks. The other thing on the outer islands in some Monkaua, I really notice everybody saying there's not enough to do. If you take the retail and make that an experience, that's a good thing. I like that and I think that'll happen naturally. Then again, looking forward into our culture, we've always been really welcoming, but now we have a lot of tourists and it's fraying the social fabric. It's creating disharmony and somehow we've got to downsize the quantity and upsize the quality. Then your thing about your phone in Europe, when Apple offers the three or four thousand Google goggles, will we interact? Well, I think like eating and dancing and music, we have to interact. It's an in-person experience. I don't think Google's goggles are going to take that away, but it certainly is going to shift things around. Then if you go a step further and play with artificial intelligence, of which there's none between my ears and lots everywhere else, then things will start to shift. I really congratulate your thought on the evolution of all of this. If you want to chime in on anything. The first thing we have to do, if Hawaii wants to grow and we really are serious about keeping our tourism, because you're going to have tourists, but you're going to have a really dysfunctional group of people coming in. A lot of young kids looking for budgets, sleeping on the beach, drinking, getting into fights, whatever you want. You're going to have a lot of immigrants moving over here to try and do the hotel workers thing. What you really need to do, and politicians need to get on the program, is to rebuild the infrastructure. Look at it as the fact that, let's focus on quality, as you said, quality, not quantity. How do you do that? Everything's very priced high, but you have to give them the experience, as you said. How do you give them the experience? You have to have cleaner water. You have to have cleaner skies. You have to have cleaner land. Right now in Waikiki, and I've lived in Waikiki for over 50 years, and I've seen it. I used to bicycle in Waikiki as a little 12, 13, 14-year-old, into Waikiki at 7, 8 o'clock. No problems that was, and hang out at the international marketplace. No problems. You can't do that anymore. You can get killed, because people are, there's gangs out there. I mean, people don't know the reality. They say, oh, the politician goes, everything is okay. It's not okay. It's not okay. You have homeless, defecating, and urinating in the park, in the beaches, where the cleaners come in at five, and I walk my dogs all the time, and they're having to clean the poop out and clean it. There's something wrong. You cannot keep doing this and say that we're going to keep increasing our tourism. You've got to increase. You have to figure out your sewer system. You've got to figure out your homeless. You've got to build your bridges. If one of our bridges, how many of the bridge breaks down? What are we going to do? You know that 1932 bridge that everybody loves, and you have to get to the side if you have a big SUV, because the buses are coming? If that bridge breaks, and they've said that bridge has problems, what are we going to do for the North Shore? Because you know how Hawaii works. It's going to take two years to fix it. So we really need the politicians to stop focusing on the, oh, you know, what do you call it? It's just nothing, basically nothing. And they have to start really focusing because you only have about five more years. You and I are all Grogans. But you know, we're going to be, we're going to go and we're lucky because now we can, at that point, we should have a little bit more assets. We should be able to look at things and say things how we really want to say it and not watch our P's and Q's with politicians. And we're, we're in our last chapter of our lives because we're in our 60s. And you know what? In 20 years you and I might not be here, but all these people who are staying, you've got real severe problems if you don't take care of it now. And people don't get it. They don't understand. The politicians don't understand. Donovan Delacruz wants to build a $80 million facility at Mililani Tech Park. Take that $80 million and rebuild our bridges to the Tech Park. I mean, what does it take for politicians to get it? I don't get that. What does it take, especially in this town? I'll jump in there because I wanted to get, I've had three guests here the third. The first was Luke Egan and what I said to him was, I'm not against you guys raising your salaries. And I'll stand by that. And I've seen politicians work and the work is really hard. But you want answers to your questions, the hard questions. And their job is oxymoronic sometimes because the job is not to lose the job. And the way you lose the job is tackling an unpopular trade-off. And the communication that, hey, you know what? Yes, this is unpopular. Yes, it's a trade-off. But don't shoot me for doing it. Congratulate me for coming out and saying, honestly, this is Yin, this is Yang, can we do black, white, and then some gray? And so I want them paid more. And I also want the civil servants to be paid more. And on Kauai, I mean, civil servant bashing is legion, except when you see the guys working hard. And then you go, shit, they do care. They are vested and they do take care. Always a bad egg. Social media mirrors and amplifies the dumb stuff. Part of the big problem is when that our parents were around, they had a couple of voices. They had three nightly news, Walter Conte, Chet Brinkley and Huntley and Peter Jennings. And these guys gave a chute about what they said. And you and I grew up in that era and you and I probably swore more than our parents did. And our kids definitely do more. And everybody gets diverted by the swear words. But the reason why you swear is because you give a chute and you want people to know it. And in this age, I mean, you and I are an example right here. I mean, the age is talking to people, being authentic, and trying to communicate, you know, and thinking about your heart and throwing it into your mouth. And hopefully, you know, the nice thing about this, you and I, is that we've talked, we're comfortable. And I let you jump in and you let me jump in. Because we feel like we know something and we can go somewhere. Yeah, we just, you and I, but you and I talk all the time and we say what we need to say, but no one seems to listen. You know, I mean, it's very frustrating because you don't want to offend anyone. This is Hawaii. We're all kind of related to everybody pretty much. We've known everybody's in small good days. And I don't want to, I don't want to end, but we have to politician and I don't mind politicians getting paid. I don't know about 62% in one year jumping out of but I can see politician because it is not an easy job. You know, you have, I've seen them in action and you have to be polite and you have had people spit on them. Some people spit on it. It's just ridiculous. But even, but we have to take a stand and we have to be more forceful in getting things done. Like an example, and I know time is the essence, but an example is four and a half years ago, I went to OHA and they were having a meeting with about taking three and a half. The city wanted to acquire three and a half acres at Makai, and they wanted to pay OHA 27 million, which was 25% for those three and a half acres, 25% more than what they, it was given to them. And they wanted to acquire because that three and a half acres is needed so that they can expand the sewer system, our sewer system at, down by Sand Island. And I went and spoke and I have no skin in the game. I wasn't getting paid by anyone. The city wasn't paying me. I just went down and I said, please do this. And Lori, who is now the, who is now head of heart, or she was the head of it then. And she said, well, you know, if you don't let us buy this like this, and it's going to eventually we're going to have to condemn it. And all the people, all the trustees were all grumbling and all that. And I said, I said to them, please do this, because this will help not only quite you people, but, and you'll get money and you can take it and buy other pieces of land. But you will be helping in cleaning up the sewer system from Paoa Valley to Neo Valley. And you know how big and how big that's what 500,000 of the people living on the island, the majority of the people. So this three and a half acres would have helped and it would have been in place now four and a half years later. If they had, and the Hawaiians, the trustees said, we don't believe you. We don't want you to talk and telling us what to do. And we don't believe the city. And we reject it like that. Boom. And nothing's been done since that. So now the city has to say, okay, Oh, we're going to have to condemn this land. Now a lot of people don't want to offend the Hawaiians. And I understand because of their, you know, their historic trauma. I understand that. But we have to move. This is the 21st century. We have to say, I'm sorry for your historic trauma, but this is what we have to do for the betterment of the people. And we have to make these decisions and go forward with it. By just sitting, now it's another four years, four and a half years later at that time, the cost of that sewer upgrade was six, six and a half billion dollars. As of today, as of today with the cost of the construction as it's gone, we're now looking at nine and a half to a billion dollars. Just to upgrade what needed to be done 15, 20 years ago, when Mufi was there, when Mufi was in power, he had remember EPA came in and they were, they were finding us on a thousand dollars a day or 10,000 because he wanted to get his agenda done, which was the rail. So we stopped that. We got it. He negotiated the city and negotiated with EPA. And now we're where we are. Nothing has been done. And we have an extension by EPA to get it done. But why don't we be forward thinking and get it done now? I mean, little things like that. You know, why don't we have instead of one year for fishing, one year off in Waikiki? Why don't we have two years off and one year on to replenish the fish? These are things, oh, because the Fisherman's Association goes to the politicians and say, hey, brah, I want to go fish. This is my culture. Don't do that to me. You've got to give me this. You've got to give me that. We have to do what is best for the majority of people in today's world. We have to stop thinking small. Hawaii is a small, we have to stop thinking small and thinking global because you know what? Our competition today is global. And you know it, and I know it, people, you know, people say, oh, we're going to put penalties on people buying into Hawaii if you're not local. Well, I don't know about the Constitution. I don't know if you can do that, but if you do that, you're still going to have rich people buying and you're still going to have poor people poor. So why don't you figure out how to make it more palatable and how would we build and help? You can't build 30,000 homes at the, at the, at the, what is it, the football stadium. You can't build high rise for poor people. You're going to have slums. You can't do that. Think outside. Think global. We have to start thinking global. That's my take on everything. That's a good one. I'm going to jump in. They say I have one minute left, but the one greatest thing I heard came from the Polynesian Voyagers Society's head. And I know at Thompson saying we're all in the canoe together. And sometimes you need a loud Steersman that really has a, your global vision, your 360 and the heart. It's got to be the heart. And I feel bad for all the things you just mentioned. I feel happy that somebody's willing to say it. And I feel blessed that some of the things that I would have said at the bar at the outlier to what you just said is devoid of swear words. Let that be my momentary legacy. And, and thanks very much. Let's do this again tomorrow. And thank you for letting me come and say my piece. I love you. I appreciate you. And thank you for all you do for us. Thank you. Aloha. Good, good deal. Big thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Check out our website, thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.