Posted on: Friday, March 23, 2001
Loans lift Hawaiian hopes for enterprise
By Yasmin Anwar
Advertiser Staff Writer
Stephen Ferguson has lived on Lana'i long enough to know that the luxury resort island needs a restaurant that fits the niche between a fancy hotel dining room and mom-and-pop plate-lunch stop.
So a year ago, he and a half-dozen of his fellow canoe paddlers started fantasizing about filling that gap.
Now, they have the blueprints for an upscale bar and restaurant in a Lana'i City plantation-style building that would serve Sam Wong-like cuisine amid a breezy, canoe club ambience.
All they need is a startup loan and the approval of the Lanai Co., whose parent company, Castle & Cooke, owns 98 percent of the 89,000-acre island.
"We're restless to get started," said Ferguson, 35, a part-Hawaiian Maui native and construction worker.
Ferguson's was just one of the local-style moneymaker dreams described yesterday at the Radisson Waikiki Prince Kuhio Hotel where the Office of Hawaiian Affairs held its second annual Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Fund conference.
Fittingly for Ferguson, perhaps, the keynote speaker was none other than successful chef and restaurateur Sam Wong.
More than 120 budding Hawaiian entrepreneurs flocked to the event, which also attracted Patrick Barrett, a non-Hawaiian who applied for an OHA loan and is challenging the constitutionality of government-financed programs restricted to Hawaiians.
Barrett, 53, wasn't the only non-Hawaiian looking for business tips. Noemi Guzman, an American Indian, had her sights set on a cozy women's retreat venture. Ronnie Bautista, a retired Louisiana cop, was looking to expand his martial arts schools. And Sanele Tauasosi of American Samoa expressed hopes to start a snack-wagon business that would sit outside schools.
As for the Hawaiians at the conference, Jarrett Bush, a 26-year-old truck driver from 'Ewa Beach, said he was hoping to open a skateboard store. Lehuanani Santos, also of 'Ewa Beach, said she wanted to strike out on her own with a business to sell pre-paid legal services.
The Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Fund was established in 1989 with a push from U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye. The federal lending program offers micro loans of up to $10,000 and regular loans of up to $75,000 to Hawaiians who want to start or expand businesses.
If Barrett's lawsuit is successful, either the program or its requirement for Hawaiian ancestry is likely to be invalidated.
Although management of the Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Fund got low marks in a recent state audit, OHA trustees at yesterday's conference said they're working on improving the program, and advised beneficiaries to use it to become self-sufficient and to strengthen the state economy.
"Take the tools and make them work for you and your communities and your families," OHA Chairwoman Haunani Apoliona said.
Perhaps the most entertaining workshop was "grassroots marketing" taught by Derek Kurisu, vice president of KTA Superstores on the Big Island, who was elected minority small-business person of the year in 1997.
Like a standup comedian, Kurisu talked about the success he has had with his downhome promotions that won his local-kine grocery store national coverage on the Food Network's "Extreme Cuisine."
He attributes his marketing success to promoting the specialness of Hawai'i, and standing out from the crowd. "I want to be different. I don't want to be the same," he said.
