Raising a hotel: The story of Kalia Tower
By Andrew Gomes
Advertiser Staff Writer
Ester Lyn DelaCruz moved from room to room two weeks ago making up the guest beds in Kalia Tower, just like the dozens of others she makes up regularly at Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa.
| Kalia Tower by the numbers | |
| • | Two — The number of floors constructed with steel each week; twice as fast as using concrete. |
| • | 25 — The day in January when a gray South African penguin was hatched at the resort. The fluffy 4-inch bird was named Kalia. |
| • | 453 — The number of palm trees planted around Hilton Hawaiian Village since Kalia Tower was started. |
| • | 1,200 — The approximate number of questions contractors asked engineers. |
| • | 2,000 — The approximate number of door handles in the tower. |
| • | 3,500 — The tons of steel used in the tower's steel frame. |
| • | 20,480 — The estimated number of mosaic tiles used to create the design in the tower's smaller swimming pool. |
| • | 578,560 — The estimated number of mosaic tiles used to create the design in the tower's main pool. |
| • | $750,000 — The amount saved by filling eight structural columns with concrete rather than steel. |
| • | $8 million — The cost to furnish the entire tower. |
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DelaCruz wasn't particularly aware that the headboards were made in Oman and designed to resemble a Queen Lili'uokalani headboard from Bishop Museum. Neither was she mindful that the bedspread pattern was inspired by an aloha shirt worn by Montgomery Clift in "From Here to Eternity."
What DelaCruz did know is that Waikiki's newest hotel tower has meant welcome work for her and hundreds of others in Hawai'i who form the backbone of the industry that brought the 453-room building to market and will shape its future.
The process of giving rise to Kalia Tower — expected by many to be the last new hotel tower built in Waikiki for years to come — reflects the living, breathing nature of a massive project, and underscores the difficulties of bringing a new hotel to market in Hawai'i's primary visitor destination.
It also paints a picture of the changing winds that buffet the thousands of people who make up the state's No. 1 industry and power the economy.
The process started 12 years ago, five years before DelaCruz started working for the company.
1989: 4,000 days till opening
Hilton officials begin considering the feasibility of a hotel tower on the mauka/'ewa corner of their Waikiki property.
Hawai'i's $10 billion tourism industry is enjoying a seventh consecutive year of booming growth, with frequent double-digit gains in monthly visitor arrivals helping to power the state's swelling economy.
Hilton, reveling in more than 90 percent occupancy at its Waikiki resort and eager to make room for more, begins conceptual planning for a new tower, analyzing designs and thinking about how a new tower would complement the rest of the village.
Two years of study pass as Hilton plows through hundreds of issues to advance the project it has named Kalia Tower. But as 1991 unfolds, a series of problems begin to stagger the tourism and construction industries. The Persian Gulf War drains tourism, and California's extended recession and the stall of the Japanese economy causes Hawai'i's economy to slow dramatically.
For the next four years, the state's economy remains stuck at less than 1 percent growth. It would be Hawai'i's worst economic slump since statehood.
The Kalia project is put on hold.
• • •
1996: 1,800 days till opening
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
Optimistic about signs of an economic rebound in Hawai'i, Hilton commissions architectural and construction drawings in anticipation of restarting its long-stalled Kalia project.
Hilton housekeeper Ester Lyn DelaCruz prepares one of the 453 newly furnished guest rooms at the Hilton's $95 million Kalia Tower.
After years of near-zero economic growth, Hawai'i looks like it might be getting back on track. Economists project that the inflation-adjusted gross state product will expand by at least 1 percent — and possibly even as much as 2.3 percent.
Hilton takes note and contracts design drawings for Kalia from Honolulu-based architectural firm Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo Inc., which immediately assembles a team of about 20 engineering firms for everything from electrical to room design.
Every significant element in the plan — from graphics on construction barriers to the color of walkway stones — must be approved not only by the architect, but by Hilton Corp. and Peter Schall, Hilton's regional senior vice president, who sometimes doodles his own designs that are incorporated into Kalia.
A 3-inch-thick ream of construction plans is finished nearly a year later — in mid-1997 — and sent to the city building department for approval.
• • •
June 1997: 1,400 days till opening
Kalia as designed is $15 million over budget. Hilton, which is financing the project with its own money, hires an outside construction management firm to get the project back in line.
Part money manager, part sheriff, James Gomes works in a construction trailer not far from Kalia Tower in a fenced-in Hilton Hawaiian Village lot that doubles as a makeshift nursery.
Gomes is an executive vice president with Construction Management & Development Inc., and is considered the chief executive officer of the Kalia project.
He heads a small team that Hilton has hired to manage the project with the directive to monitor materials and equipment logistics, motivate contractors and keep costs down by being "creative" with construction plans.
Gomes and CM&D are asked to trim $15 million off Kalia's price tag, which has ballooned because of various structural and ornamental design elements.
The company seeks out a geotechnical engineer to determine if there is a more efficient system of anchoring the building instead of hammering as many as 500 piles into the ground. Ernest Hirata takes on the task.
Hirata, an 'Aiea engineer, had worked on the state's H-3 freeway project using a system of shaft supports formed by pumping concrete into sheathed holes drilled deep in the earth. For the freeway, these "caissons" were typically 50 to 60 feet deep. To support Kalia, the shafts would have to be 75 to 125 feet deep.
Hirata tests the soil at the Hilton site, taking samples from depths as low as 169 feet. The samples show a top layer of silty clay and water at 4 to 5 feet deep. Below that are six more non-uniform layers made up of silty gravel, coral shelves and sand. Hirata has a test shaft built and tested twice to ensure it and other columns like it will be able to support the 25-story tower.
The system holds, and produces other advantages over pile-driving: less disturbance for hotel guests, area residents and others, and less risk of damaging other property anchored to the coral shelves below. The system also ties in well with what will be Waikiki's first all-steel-frame tower, designed by Honolulu-based structural engineering firm Martin Bravo & Chock.
In general, concrete structures require more labor and foundational support, but are usually preferred for Hawai'i hotels because concrete is less expensive. In Kalia's case, CM&D picks steel, deciding that the weight requirements and reduced labor power will offset higher material costs.
Timing is good. When a Korean steel provider makes the winning bid on the Kalia job in 1998, prices have fallen due to the Asian financial crisis. "Basically we hit it at an all-time low," Gomes says.
Labor costs are minimized by bolting many connections rather than welding, and using precast concrete floors rather than pouring them. The moves also allow floor and frame construction to fly along at two floors completed every week — twice as fast as a typical concrete structure.
The steel-frame building will be 25 percent lighter, reducing the number of foundation supports required. For added efficiency, eight of the biggest support columns are designed as hollow shells filled with concrete rather than the more typical 1-inch-thick steel plates that are welded together to make solid 15-by-48-inch columns.
The design saves $750,000. Other savings are found by eliminating a decorative roof and deleting the plan for a basement, which requires moving back-of-the-house operations to another part of the building.
Kalia is back on budget.
• • •
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
Early 1998: About 1,200 days till opening
A worker surveys the outline of a Hawaiian quilt pattern painted on the top of the village's parking garage.
Hilton selects Hawaiian Dredging Construction Co. as general contractor in late 1997. But the project is again delayed as the Asian financial crisis swells and Hawai'i's soft economy lingers.
"The prospects for economic growth in Hawai'i are less bright than we projected last year" is the message from the state's chief economist to the legislature in 1998.
Visitor industry executives and economists share the bleak view that tourism will be flat, with no indication of a rebound anytime soon. By the end of the year, total tourism arrivals have dropped, cutting into hotel occupancies and revenues. But forecasts for 1999 look a little better.
Hilton keeps tweaking plans for Kalia tower (removing a tennis court planned atop the parking garage, adding a spa, enclosing the lobby and increasing dining options) as it watches visitor numbers led by Mainland tourists climb nearly 2 percent in 1999.
The 1999 Legislature also provides hope that it might pass a bill providing tax credits of up to 20 percent for construction or renovations in resort districts. Gomes says the tax incentive is important for the project moving forward.
"Considering the economic condition," he says, "it could not have even started ... 1998 was not a good year, and the future didn't look too bright either."
The House and Senate cannot agree on the size of the tax benefit and fail to pass the measure. Still, passage the following year, with a retroactive clause, looks certain.
Hilton takes a chance and starts Kalia construction.
• • •
Aug. 2, 1999: 653 days till opening
Hilton gives the go-ahead for construction. Two days later, the geodesic dome and a miniature golf course are demolished.
Fred Ing remembers working in the Hilton dome back in the late 1950s as the sound man and stage manager of Hawaiian musician Alfred Apaka.
"It was hot," he says. "The dome was really hot. It was like sitting in a pot with the sun hitting the outside: you get cooked on the inside. And noisy. When it rained it was just like you were in a drum."
Still, the aluminum dome was an engineering feat of its time and became home to performances of Hawai'i's top entertainers including Apaka, Don Ho and others.
When bulldozers pull the dome down in August 1999, Ing — now Hilton Hawaiian's director of special projects — is sad to see a familiar place go, but he knows "it was time."
Also removed with the dome, however, are water and sewer lines. The accidentally severed pipes have to be shut off, and along with them goes the water to all of Hilton Hawaiian's more than 2,000 hotel rooms, which are full.
Hilton trucks in bottled water and portable toilets to accommodate guests, some of whom receive free rooms because of the inconvenience.
With the site finally clear, crews spread a layer of dirt 10 feet deep, then compact it to four feet to increase support for the building and elevate view planes for the third-floor pool deck over the adjacent parking structure.
San Francisco-based Malcolm Drilling Co. Inc. arrives with a hydraulic rotary drilling rig and crane-mounted vibrating hammer to create holes up to about 125 feet deep for the foundational pinnings. It is the company's third Hawai'i project in seven years, but this one proves tougher than expected.
"They struggled," Gomes says. "They didn't know how hard coral was." Hirata says nobody has created shaft holes that deep before in the state.
Meanwhile, on the third floor of Hilton's Diamond Head Tower, contractors are transforming a guest room into a mock-up of a Kalia room that will be used to gauge how design features, including furniture and fixtures, will look.
• • •
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
March 1, 2000: 441 days till opening
Landscapers Carlito Centino, left, and Alex Marcelo prepared the front of Kalia Tower for its Wednesday opening.
Steel frame begins to rise.
Four months before the first columns, beams, girders, plates and braces are bolted or welded together for Kalia Tower, the crane for assembling the steel superstructure starts a barge trip down the Mississippi River.
The leased crane is one of the most expensive pieces of construction equipment — and the most relied upon. It arrives in Hawai'i in January 2000 following its river ride and subsequent connections westward to the coast and across the Pacific.
The crane does the heavy lifting of steel while construction workers fasten pieces in place. Frame construction of the first three floors takes one month to finish and requires 40 percent of the 3,500 tons of steel that will be used in the entire tower.
The remaining room floors go up faster. As each level is finished, concrete floors previously manufactured by Hawaiian Bitumuls Paving & Precast Co. at Campbell Industrial Park are lowered by the crane into place. Steel tabs set in the floor pieces are welded to the frame. The floor decks help tie the structure together and keep the building from twisting and swaying.
After four months of work, the steel frame is finished.
• • •
May 4, 2000: 377 days till opening
Schall notices an area on the Kalia construction site he thinks might not drain properly. A civil engineer re-examines the design.
From his office in Diamond Head Tower, Schall cannot see Kalia tower being built. Yet he can easily envision it. His office is filled with dozens of its details: architectural renderings, material samples of fabric, wood, tile, stone, painting mockups, and big foam boards of technical line drawings. Unfurled blueprints blanket a loveseat. Rolled drawings are piled on a coffee table.
While Schall only visits the construction site every couple of weeks, he remains the driving force pulling the tower toward completion, leading weekly meetings and a monthly review session that coordinate and assess work on Kalia.
Schall, who has been with Hilton since 1965, has had previous experience in hotel construction work. In 1980, he supervised a massive renovation of the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago. When he came to Hawai'i in 1986 as Hilton Hawaiian Village general manager, he was thrust into the middle of a $100 million master-planned renewal of the resort involving renovating pools, restaurants and roughly 500 guest rooms a year.
Those projects served as warm-ups for Kalia, which has become known at the resort as "Peter's baby."
• • •
May 16, 2000: 380 days till opening
Travel wholesalers and meeting planners have begun soliciting Kalia reservations. It is one year before the scheduled opening of the tower. 2000 is shaping up to be healthy for the state's No. 1 tourism industry, with some hotels already reporting record occupancy levels.
The filling in of a hotel tower — with everything from water pipes to wallpaper — is a bottom-up process. Contractors of different trades follow one another through the structure, repeating work from floor to floor all the way to the top.
"It's called chasing trades up the building," says Steven Anderson, assistant project manager with CM&D.
Keith Awana, an iron worker who assembles stairways and railings, is proud to be ahead of a crew of masons. "The masons are eating our dust," he boasts.
Competitive pressure helps move the work along. When work on the fifth floor falls behind, the floor is skipped to keep the timing of one trade following another.
"If you get a gap in there, it doesn't move along like a smooth machine," Anderson says. "You want the trades pushing each other. The idea is to keep chasing the teams up."
As trades move up, the crane is used to stock the floors with materials and equipment.
"It's just a constant process feeding this building," Anderson says.
• • •
Aug. 23, 2000: 266 days till opening
Construction is 40 percent complete. Hilton announces that work is on schedule and on budget.
Every day at a different time, Anderson takes a quick ride up to the roof of Kalia on an exterior elevator called a manhoist, and takes a long walk back down.
He monitors construction activity, examining work and counting worker heads on each floor. He traverses the building downward using one fire stairway at the end of the building, crossing a floor, then descending the fire stairway at the opposite end of the building.
Anderson is part of the sheriff's team that keeps an eye on the pace and quality of construction. He isn't exactly the most popular guy in the building, but he helps keep its growth on schedule.
Dieter Huckestein, president of hotel operations for Hilton Hotels, half jokes that construction of Kalia has moved along on schedule because the project has had 10 years of planning.
But there is also the threat of penalties for finishing late. Some property owners establish fines for late construction by the day or sometimes even the minute, says Gomes. For its Kalia project, Hilton did not specify damages. "You don't want to go there. You don't even want to think about being late," Gomes says.
• • •
Sept. 6, 2000: 252 days till opening
A team travels to Idaho to survey colors of paving stones for use on Kalia's exterior and lobby walkways.
As contractors pull cable-TV wire to around the 11th floor on its way up the building, Anderson has taken a break from his daily building visits. He is visiting Burley, Idaho.
It's not his first off-site quality-control mission. The previous winter, he visited Pittsburgh to tour two Eljer toilet manufacturing plants to assess the sound and flushing ability of porcelain and cast iron commodes. (After that trip, Hilton decided to go with a Japanese-made toilet "because the technology was superior," Anderson says.)
In Idaho, Anderson is accompanied by John Leach, Hilton's director of design. They spend two days touring five quarries, including one in Utah, to examine color variations of quartzite to get the shade right.
• • •
Oct. 24, 2000: 222 days till opening
Wellness center Holistica Hawai'i opens a temporary location at Hilton Hawaiian Village in preparation for its Kalia debut.
Since Kalia construction began, Schall has been consumed trying to manage the coexistence of potentially disrupting construction with ongoing hotel operations.
So far, aside from the water shutoff, Hilton guests have had minimal disturbances: rerouted walkways, traffic conjestion and the background buzz of construction equipment. Internal guest-satisfaction survey responses were better during construction than in 1999, according to Hilton, which adds that occupancy at the village in 2000 is hitting a record high.
Frank Zvanovec, a tourist staying in an oceanfront Rainbow Tower room, says he hasn't noticed the construction. "Actually," his son adds, "there's more inconvenience when they're filming 'Bay Watch'."
• • •
Jan. 4, 2001: 132 days till opening
Two construction workers are injured in a fall when a scissor lift fails. One is held at a hospital for testing as work continues to move ahead.
The end of 2000 brings a victory for Hawai'i's tourism industry, which welcomes a record 6.98 million visitors, a 4 percent gain over 1999. The numbers bolster the industry's outlook for the new year, which gets off with a kick in January amid 7 percent visitor growth.
The start of the new year also is marked by a general replacement of contractors on the Kalia site. Largely gone are the workers welding steel, pouring concrete, running wire, pulling pipes and framing walls. Now filling the building, which has recently been enclosed by an exterior skin, are painters, wallpaper workers, glass door contractors, fixture installers and carpet layers.
Interior finishes are already complete on the lowest room floors, which have bathroom mirrors but still need furniture. Interior painting is moving into the middle floor rooms. Carpeting, one of the last finishes, has gotten closer to the top of the building. Many of the highest rooms still need doors, bathroom countertops, closet shelving and balcony tiles.
• • •
Feb. 13, 2001: 92 days till opening
566 people seek 100 to 150 jobs at a one-day job fair Feb. 13 to increase staff for the operation of Kalia Tower.
Job seekers anticipating the need for Kalia workers started calling Hilton at the start of the year, a couple of months before the hotelier began advertising positions.
To fast-track the hiring process, Hilton turns its Coral Ballroom into an employment processing station with a job-posting room, application room, waiting rooms, qualification screening booths and department manager interview areas.
The first 200 people start arriving an hour before the application center opens at 9 a.m. Julie Walker, the resort's human resources director, says O'ahu's low unemployment rate (about 3.7 percent at the time) makes it more difficult to fill positions, but offering interviews on the spot helps draw applicants.
The majority of available positions are in the housekeeping and food and beverage departments. But there is a wide variety of available jobs, including information technology specialist, boiler mechanic, revenue analyst, human resources coordinator and mason.
The highest ranking of Hilton Hawaiian Village's 1,670 employees have the first opportunity to work in the new tower.
Hilton offers about 100 people jobs. Eventually, closer to 150 employees will be needed when Kalia is at full operation.
• • •
March 23, 2001: 54 days till opening
Interior work is nearly complete on most room floors as Hilton engages in a full-scale marketing blitz. But, despite a strong early showing, Hawai'i's tourism industry begins to show signs of weakening.
The first effects of a slowing visitor market begin to appear in Hawai'i in February when arrivals drop by 4 percent and statewide hotel occupancy dips ever so slightly by 0.4 percent.
The drops seem small, given that record numbers of travelers boosted figures a year earlier, but the hotel occupancy drop is the first monthly decline in more than a year and suggests that more could follow.
They do. In March, hotel occupancy is down 3 percent (1 percent on O'ahu). Visitor arrivals fall 2 percent.
Although some hotel executives fret about the falloff, Schall isn't concerned. "A lot of this change is really in the meetings and conventions market," he says. "We don't have this year the citywide meetings and conventions that we had last year."
Visitor industry officials adopt bleak forecasts of near-zero growth for the year, and launch aggressive marketing initiatives to help counter the slowdown.
By coincidence, Hilton's long-planned and detailed promotional campaign, "Perfecting Paradise," kicks off, designed to gradually increase awareness of Kalia and the overall resort as the new tower nears completion. The new tower is being positioned as the resort's flagship, although Ali'i Tower remains the most expensive.
Non-executive Kalia rooms with a mountain view cost $185 to $380 a night; with an ocean view, $229 to $425.
Consumer marketing kicks off in Japan with Hilton running six-page inserts in travel and trade publications. Japanese trade advertisements are followed by seminars for wholesale travel agents, tower tours for travel writers, direct mail with marketing partners, and Internet ads.
For Mainland markets, Hilton holds seminars in 22 cities, advertises in meeting and convention publications, and sends direct-mail advertisements to corporate meeting planners, associations and incentive travel companies.
Consumer advertising then hits the radio, newspapers and magazines. By April, four-panel inserts are going to 2 million consumers in six West Coast cities. Inserts also start appearing in Los Angeles Magazine's May issue.
In Los Angeles, 40 billboards are plastered with the "Perfecting Paradise" message. Other advertising is running in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
Hilton will not disclose its advertising campaign budget for competitive reasons. But Roberta Rinker-Ludloff, Hilton's area director of marketing, acknowledges the heightened challenges of filling the resort, which gains 25 percent more inventory with Kalia.
"We have our work cut out for us because we can't steal 25 percent market share from everyone else," she says.
• • •
May 1, 2001: 15 days till opening
10 floors are ready for occupancy, but the whole tower won't be finished for the soft opening in two weeks.
Dave Seeley could really use two elevators on this day instead of one. He is coordinating the installation of hundreds of lamps, TVs, beds, armoires, luggage benches, pictures, mini-refrigerators and other furniture for Honolulu-based WDI Furniture Contractors.
WDI has a lot of work to do. Besides installing furniture, the company assembles bell carts, service carts and housekeeping carts. It also stocks such hotel supplies as pots, pans and ironing boards as well as almost nearly room and hall accessory. "You're talking about the little shampoos and conditioners," says Ernie Padilla, WDI foreman.
Seeley is supposed to have the use of two of the three service elevators, "but we're being nice," he says. Other contractors are using one service car, mostly finishing rooms that served as access to trash shoots and the manhoist that were attached to lanais, or touching up blemishes.
Housekeeping personnel are using the other elevator. They follow the furniture contractors, dressing the beds and cleaning the rooms, which are then ready for guests.
• • •
May 16, 2001: Opening day
Billed as "the beginning of a new era" for Hilton Hawaiian Village, Kalia Tower opens.
A complementary limousine pulls up along Kalia's porte cochere about 10:30 a.m. with the tower's first guests. The first eastbound guests arrive later in the day and are given a similar complimentary limo ride. Both arrivals receive courtesy room upgrades.
They are among 40 guests in the new tower on its first day of business. Six floors are in use. The rest of the rooms will be put into use tomorrow. Bishop Museum will open in July. The spa, wellness center and pools will open in August. Conference rooms are scheduled to be available later in the year.
After months of seemingly impossible deadlines, Schall says the first day of business goes smoothly. "It came off very well," he says. "On any major project the last couple of days are a real push, and there are times you may think you will never make it, and then everyone comes together to pull it off."
After all these years, Schall says he thinks Kalia's long-awaited debut is good timing. "Economic conditions always change," he says. "Nothing is ever static."
Hilton won't disclose projected occupancies for Kalia Tower, but Schall says that when all of the floors are open, the new tower will be filled in the mid- to high-80 percent range.
Those numbers will of course fluctuate, and Schall says he won't be able to gauge Kalia's performance for a year.
In the evening, Schall is host to a ceremony and blessing at which he announces: "We are now one step closer to perfecting paradise."
Three twice-lifesize bronze statues of kahiko hula dancers are unveiled as dancers perform in front of the art pieces, marking the redefined entry to Hilton Hawaiian Village. Kalia looms behind.
