Gambling would alter our reality
By Jerry Burris
Advertiser Editorial Editor
Henry Kaiser or Chris Hemmeter?
That's your basic choice as you try to decide (as our state lawmakers must) how you feel about the latest proposal to bring gambling and a new kind of tourism to the Islands.
The latest push is coming from Sun International Hotels Ltd., headed by the flamboyant and visionary Sol Kerzner, once of South Africa and now of, well, the world.
Sun International's most successful project is the dreamscape-like hotel and casino Atlantis in the Bahamas.
It is a fantasy resort, with a massive marine habitat and an otherworldly architectural style.
Butch Kerzner, Sol's son and Sun's president, was in Honolulu last week to talk up the company's proposal for an Atlantis-scale hotel/resort/casino at Ko Olina. He talked about a project that would be as extravagant in scale as the Atlantis project but with an entirely different "look" — one that would capitalize on Hawai'i's special identity and qualities.
Sol Kerzner is often described as a person who can dream big dreams, envision how they can become reality and then make them so. In that sense, he sounds a lot like the late Henry J. Kaiser, who came to Hawai'i around statehood full of big dreams and equipped with the determination to make them reality.
Where others saw a swamp and a patch of barren land, Kaiser saw and built Hawai'i Kai. Where others saw a rundown hotel far from the center of Waikiki, Kaiser saw the Hilton Hawaiian Village.
But others might see Kerzner more as a Chris Hemmeter, who promises huge promises but then leaves town when things don't work out. A column on this page describes Hemmeter's dreams-to-dust experience with a casino in New Orleans.
The political focus on Sun has been on its desire to have a casino as part of the mega-resort it wants to build. The Sun people convincingly argue that gambling is a small part of their overall resort experience, that their business is "developing destination resorts, not casino gambling rooms."
But they admit that the casino is crucial to making the project economically viable.
So in some ways, Sun has framed the debate correctly. Gambling is a major economic, political and social issue that deserves high-level debate in this state.
But even without the casino, the Sun project presents a decision that Hawai'i has been reluctant to make: What kind of a visitor destination do we wish to be? Disney and Las Vegas (even without gambling) have redefined what it means to be a tourist destination. They are products of imagination and fantasy, not reality. While a fair amount of myth-making went into the building of Hawai'i's reputation, it is built on reality: The reality of a natural environment that is second-to-none and a cultural experience that is ours alone.
Will that be enough as we move into the next generation of tourism, or will we have to invent a new reality, a new experience to survive? That's the political question Sun International has presented to us, and it is one we need to answer.
Reach Jerry Burris through letters@honoluluadvertiser.com.
