Looking to the Mainland

After 98 years and three guiding generations in Hawaii, the Dillinghams rank as one of Hawaii's most powerful families. They have established themselves as leaders of society and top island boosters, put together a $150 million business network that includes land, barges, railroads, trucking, buildings, docks and warehouses. But Hawaii no longer offers the opportunities it once did. Its old business families have seen their power gradually slip and more aggressive competitors move in to challenge their economic predominance. Building contracts are fewer, and the real estate market is weak. The Dillingham family has therefore set itself broader sights. Under the direction of third-generation Lowell Dillingham, 53, it is shucking its old parochialism and moving into the main stream of world and U.S. business.

"There is no place in the world we won't go if we see a chance to make money," says Lowell Dillingham. The Dillingham Corp., which Lowell formed in 1961 by putting together 21 of the family-run subsidiaries, is working on an airport in Malaya ($6,700,000), a harbors project in Indonesia ($5,000,000), an airport in Saudi Arabia ($3,400,000), and wharfing and harbor facilities in Singapore ($4,800,000). It is involved in a $28 million modernization of Australia's Mount Isa railroad and mines and a $3,500,000 reclamation project in the Philippines. By no means ready to abandon Hawaii, Dillingham is building a $15 million apartment building in Waikiki, a $5,000,000 auditorium and convention center in Honolulu.

As Lowell Dillingham sees it, the real opportunity for his company lies on the U.S. mainland. Largely by trading parts of the Dillingham's huge Hawaii land holdings, Lowell hopes to maneuver into the big-time land business on the mainland. He recently swapped 118 acres of sugar cane for a luxury apartment house in Dallas and 27 acres of Honolulu waterfront for one acre over looking San Francisco's Union Square, where the aging Plaza Hotel will be razed for an office building. The corporation intends to build a $26 million, 43-story office building on the downtown lands of San Francisco's Wells Fargo Bank. On the shores of California's Lake Tahoe, the Dillinghams are involved in a joint venture to create 725 acres of man-made waterfront properties for vacation homes.

Broken Leg. The Dillingham empire began when New England-born Benjamin Franklin Dillingham, first officer on a schooner, broke his leg in a fall from a horse while visiting Hawaii in 1865--and watched his ship sail away without him. Making the best of things, he married a missionary's daughter, bought a hardware store and gradually expanded his holdings into lands, crops, herds and a highly profitable railroad. Son Walter expanded the empire further with Hawaiian Dredging and Construction, the cornerstone of the corporation today. The Dillinghams helped build U.S. Pacific airstrips before and during World War II, supervised $1 billion worth of military construction during the war. As vice president of Hawaiian Dredging after the war, Walter's son Lowell began pushing the company into worldwide work. In 1955 he started taking over direction of the Dillingham interests, and in 1961 became president. His father, now 88 and ailing, remains chairman of the corporation.

Harvard-educated Lowell Dillingham tempers acumen with whimsy. He insists on the color blue for almost everything, including his office telephones, carpets and draperies. He shuns Honolulu society, spends his free time at a 105,000-acre ranch where he raises and hunts game birds. One of his recent tasks has been to prop up the Dillingham image. Earnings have slumped because of a drop in construction contracts; Brother Ben Dillingham, 46, was defeated last fall in a race for the U.S. Senate; and Henry Kaiser, particularly, has been giving the Dillinghams some stiff new island competition. To such challenges Lowell Dillingham brings a remarkable personal tenacity. An amateur horticulturist, he decided to grow quality apples in Hawaii, where only mediocre ones have been able to withstand the heat. When the first tree died from the heat, Lowell ordered refrigerated coils and wrapped them around the second young apple tree. It died, too--but Lowell is still pondering other ways.

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