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Kerzner's Son Lobbying for Hawaii Casino

Kerzner, president of Sun International Hotels Ltd., has spent the past two weeks lobbying lawmakers in Hawaii for an exclusive gaming license.

Kerzner, 37, said his company builds casino-resorts that are "larger-than-life and blow away the customers."

But he left Honolulu last in not much better position than when he first arrived here. But he plans on coming back soon with a new lobbying strategy.

"We've got to think things through," Kerzner told the Honolulu Advertiser. "I think we've done an incredibly poor job communicating what we want to do."

And he understands it might take awhile to persuade Hawaii lawmakers to allow him to build a resort-casino.

Sun International lobbied and waited in the Bahamas for 10 years before winning approval to take over a failing hotel. The company turned that hotel into the bustling resort-casino Atlantis.

The company spent $1.1 billion on Atlantis, building water slides, lagoons, grottos, waterfalls and the world's largest open-air aquarium, which holds more than 100 species of fish.

Salvatore Di Pietro, gaming equity analyst for Merrill Lynch & Co., said at Atlantis, gaming brings in 25 percent of the business.

"It's a well-run company," Di Pietro said. "They have a clear strategy of building these must-see attractions where gaming is not the primary focus."

Kerzner wants to spend $800 million to build a Hawaii version of Atlantis next to one of the Ko'Olina lagoons on Oahu.

Sun International is proposing to pay the state $100 million for an exclusive, 20-year gambling license to build a 1,500-room resort-casino.

Kerzner said exclusive license is to ensure that small slot machine operations or Vegas-style casinos in Waikiki hotels don't take away from the luxury atmosphere that he envisions for the Ko'Olina resort.

Kerzner said the resort would create 6,000 jobs and generate somewhere around $270 million to $350 million every year.

The casino is necessary to lure tourists back to the islands and attract new visitors from other markets, he said.

"We've got a lot of things to think about," Kerzner said. "We're not quite sure exactly where to go next."

Howard Kerzner is the son of Sol Kerzner, the chairman and chief executive of Sun International.

Sol Kerzner is best known in Las Vegas for his aborted bid to acquire the Desert Inn on the Las Vegas Strip from then-owner Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. Steve Wynn acquired the D.I. shortly after Kerzner backed out of the $275 million deal in March 2000.

In gaming circles, Sol Kerzner is also well known for a lucrative deal in which a partnership he headed developed and for a time managed the giant Mohegan Sun Indian casino in Connecticut.

The Boston Globe reported the partnership, Trading Cove Associates, will have received an estimated $1 billion from the tribe that owns the casino over the life of the partnership -- apparently hundreds of millions of dollars more than allowed by federal law.

Critics charge that amount is exploitative and well above the 30 percent limit on profits non-Indians are allowed to earn from Indian casinos. Trading Cove and Mohegan officials have defended their arrangement as appropriate, though that deal has prompted Congress to consider tightening the law to ensure tribes are not exploited by non-Indian developers.

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