From bankruptcy to billions.

From Bankruptcy To Billions

New on the Top 250. #75, Horita Holdings Inc.; #172, Horita Construction Inc. In Herbert Horita's view of things, 1975 marked the year the world - or at least his $30-million stake in it - fell apart. Wiped out by a real estate slump, the local developer found himself $140 million in debt, his share in a 16-year-old empire of homes, office buildings, industrial parks and shopping centers reduced to his own house and two-story headquarters in Kalihi. Sold for badly needed cash were titles and development rights to an array of trophies including Pearlridge Estates, Village Park and Waialae Iki IV - all Horita residential developments - and the Waikiki Sunset and Waikiki Banyan condo-hotels.

Horita owed roughly $750,000 in rent and other payments on a 530-acre coastal tract in Leeward Oahu and faced losing Ko Olina, the mega-resort he envisioned rising someday from those Ewa canefields. "I told the lenders, 'If you take my house and my office building, I'll file for bankruptcy,'" he recalls. "But I really was already bankrupt." The threat worked. Bankers offered $25 million in operating and construction loans so the brash developer could stay in business. "They agreed to lend us money from project to project," says Horita, "so with every project we developed, the lenders took almost everything - for the next eight years."

Fifteen years later, Horita has done more than ride out a recession. His slate of 11,500 residential units statewide - from the 300-unit Pearlridge Estates to Maui Lani, a 3,300-home project planned for the center of the Valley Isle - ranks him among Hawaii's most prolific homebuilders. Ko Olina, rescued with the help of a new partnership in 1978, is evolving into a $7-billion world-class resort that has carved out new lagoons and beaches on the Leeward coast and will add an estimated 5,100 jobs to its economy. A state decision in June gave Horita and his partners the preliminary go-ahead to develop another major project - the coveted but controversial $1.3-billion convention center complex in the heart of Waikiki.

Horita's world in 1990 is expanding far and fast, with new developments foreseen for Maui, the Big Island and Washington, D.C. Anchored by Ko Olina, his empire claims 75th place on this year's Hawaii Business Top 250, with revenues of $74 million. Horita Construction, a separate company spawned in part by the magnitude of the resort project, grossed $26.7 million last year and takes the 172nd spot on the list. "We're expanding our market into double and triple what it is now," Horita says.