Real Estate for sale on Maui

Maui Research and Technology Center


http://www.htdc.org/

"Enormous potential exists for the high technology industry in Maui due to the intellectually stimulating atmosphere created by Maui's beauty and lifestyle, Hawaii's vast and growing high-technology support infrastructure, and the state's geographic position, making it a natural portal between the US and Asian high technology markets,"
- Lynn Gordon Butterfield, Chief Operations Officer of the Wayne Brown Institute.

Maui's high tech industries are growing and will increasingly be important contributors to our economy. The Economic Development Coordinator is the Mayor's designee to serve on the Maui Economic Development Board (MEDB) and attends monthly committee and board meetings to discuss Maui Research and Technology Center (MRTC) activities, happenings at the Maui Research and Technology Park (MRTP), economic development issues and tech promotion and marketing. The incubator space at the MRTC is fully occupied. There are over 30 companies in the park with approximately 350 employees, 270 of whom were hired locally. A second incubator facility is needed to accommodate the interest for space there.
  • Maui Economic Development Board: The Maui Economic Development Board (MEDB), a Hawaii not-for-profit corporation, has for the past dozen years been working to help diversify the economy of Maui by emphasizing technology-based industry. These efforts have included development of the Maui Research and Technology Park and management of the Maui Research and Technology Center within the park.
  • Maui Research and Technology Park: The Maui Research and Technology Park is a 330-arce research and technology park development on the slopes of Mt. Haleakala. The park offers technology-oriented companies an ideal business location allowing them to maximize opportunities in both the Mainland U.S. and Asia-Pacific markets.
  • Maui Research and Technology Center: Maui Research and Technology Center, which currently incubates nine high tech start-up companies, a communications and computation center and a video teleconferencing facility, is an important component in fostering the technology industry on Maui.
  • Maui High Performance Computing Center: Maui High Performance Computing Center (MHPCC) is a national supercomputing center established in 1993 by the University of New Mexico under a cooperative agreement with the Air Force Research Laboratory. The computational resources are a 603 IMB SP nodes with 256 gigaflops of processing power, 167 gigabytes of total memory, 2.1 terabytes of internal disk, SGI Onyx Reality Engine system and a variety of high-end IBM, SGI and SUN workstations.
  • High Technology Development Corporation: High Technology Development Corporation's (HTDC) mission is to facilitate the development and growth of commercial high technology industry in Hawaii. HTDC actively markets and promotes Hawaii as a site for high technology applications and gives advice on policy and planning.
  • Hawaii venture capital sites: Information on financing for high technology ventures may be found at the following sites
    Hawaii Strategic Development Corporation
    Hawaii Venture Group
    Hawaii Venture Capital Association
    Tigernet
  • International Venture Capital Conference: The first WBI Investors Choice International Capital Conference held on Maui on May 19-20, 1999. The conference provided a unique opportunity for fifteen early-stage, high-technology companies, including four from Hawaii (Inegrated Coffee Technologies, Inc.; Monster Software, Inc.; ProBio Inc.; and Rescue Technologies Corporation) to procure "seed" investment from some of the world's leading professional and venture capital firms.
High Tech a Maui Priority

Development of a robust high tech industry in Maui County remains an important priority for the Apana Administration. We assisted high tech Maui marketing efforts, hosted focus groups and fam tours for media and meeting planners for such groups as the President's Circle of the National Academy of Sciences, responded to inquiries, provided a clearinghouse of information and other resources, assisted in the preparation of collateral materials and collaborated on other initiatives designed to promote the development of Maui's high tech industry.

Business development/attraction Mission to the Mainland (Winter 1999)

In partnership with the Maui Economic Development Board (MEDB) and Development Counsellors International, the Mayor, his economic development coordinator and MEDB President Jeanne Skog completed a very successful business development/attraction mission to the mainland (Silicon Valley and east coast media markets) to further this goal. The December mission was designed for face-to-face meetings with three types of people:
  • high tech corporate leaders with an expressed interest in learning more about doing business in Maui;
  • site selection consultants retained by companies to advise them on expansion and relocation matters; and
  • top business and high tech media whose reporting reaches the corporate decision makers and influencers we want to reach
The 5 day mission agenda involved 20 meetings with 24 people in 11 cities and four states. We met with Steve Case of America Online, the VP for Worldwide Real Estate and Facilities for Sybase (with 120 locations worldwide), leading location consultants for groups like Arthur Anderson, Price Waterhouse Coopers and the Wadley-Donovan Group and top editors and reporters for media such as Time, U.S. News and World Report, and the Economist just to name a few. The media contacts produced printed stories and features on Maui's High Tech industry as well as other opportunities.

The trip was highly educational for us as well. It helped to further refine the vision of what kinds of companies are best suited for Maui and Maui for them; what kinds of data they need and how it should be presented and what advantages some of Maui's assets such as the super computer offer. More importantly, the mission put Maui on the "radar screens" of highly influential people, in many cases for the first time. Maui was prospecting in ways the State had yet to contemplate. It was obvious from this mission that neither the State nor Maui had not been in front of most of these corporate, advisory and media VIPs with any kind of business-related message. We made an important first step, but keeping Maui on the radar screen will involved continued work.