b'LEFT: (left to right) Christopher B. Hemmeter; Darryl Hartley-Leonard, President of Hyatt Hotels; Pat Cowell, Regional Vice President, Hyatt Hawaii; and Thos Rohr at the opening of the Hyatt Regency Waikoloa.A resort, he said in 1990, must create a sense of experience. People want more than a room and a bed. Todays traveler is look-ing for revival, for newness, for the unexpected. The impact must be greater than the sum of the many parts.At Waikoloa, the experience Hemmeter sought to impart, was created with a combination of art, elegance, and downright fun. Originally sketched on a cocktail napkin, plans included a lagoon where guests could swim with dolphins, a futuristic monorail, boats traveling on a waterway to transport awe-struck guests to their rooms, a crashing waterfall under which one could walk, multiple swimming pools, public spaces filled with Polynesian and Asian art, and themed restaurants with authentic Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and other cuisines of the world.OpeningdaydignitariesincludedHawaiiauthorJames Mr. Fantasy Resort Michener, singers Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach, and busi-ness and social elites from around the state. It was one of 1988s Christopher Bagwell Hemmeter,most lavish events.1939-2003 My dad was a dreamer, says Hemmeters son, Christopher R. Hemmeter, who was given the task of procuring the art collection Christopher B. Hemmeter was one of the Aloha States most char- for the hotels. I was just out of school, and my dad had this idea; ismatic hotel developers in the 1970s and 1980s, and his influencehe had seen some Chinese Imperial art when he was on a trip, and is perhaps nowhere more evident than at Waikoloa Beach Resort.he wanted me to go to Asia to collect and commission works we It was here along the Kohala Coast that one of his loftiest dreamscould display around the resorts.took shape: the Hyatt Regency Waikoloa. Nowadays operated asFrom the artisans of Bali to the bronze foundries of Bangkok Hilton Waikoloa Village, when the sprawling 1,240-room resortto the marble quarries of Yang Pinga small village near the opened in September 1988, it was the largest andbuilt at a costMongolian border where green, black, rose, and white marble has of $360 millionthe most expensive hotel ever built in the islands. been carved for more than 2000 yearsthe Hemmeters traveled, But Hemmeter, who passed away in 2003, was never one tooften negotiating prices with sign language. think small. When you spoke with himwhether you were aThe scale of the art was often so big, the younger Hemmeter bank executive considering funding one of his massive projectsrecalls, that it sometimes took a while to get our point across. or a journalist writing a storyyoud listen to his vision andThe Chinese horses and carriage down by the meeting rooms at believe that what he was describing was not only possible, but theWaikoloa, for example, is an oversized replica of a small sculpture best thing ever. It was his gift to dream big and make you dreammy dad had seen. Can you imagine what it took to not only create big right alongside him. that piece but to transport it from Asia to Hawai`i?4 8'