Paradise Lures Claremont Firm

KIHEI, Hawaii — When software developer Carole Baggerly came to Maui on vacation last year, she wasn’t expecting to make any major changes in her life. But then, she hadn’t thought seriously about opportunities on this idyllic isle.

It happened, however, that Baggerly’s scientist husband wanted to have dinner with an old classmate from Caltech who was living here. The college chum turned out to be Michael Boughton, the man in charge of recruiting high-tech pioneers for the Maui Research and Development Park.

Baggerly liked Boughton’s pitch so well that she transplanted her Claremont, Calif.-based company, Baggerly & Associates, to the park. The company provides electronic data interchange--paperless documentation--services.

Baggerly, who rents about half the occupied space at the park’s incubation facility for her 15 employees, is finding an untapped market for her products. She plans to send out feelers to East Asia later this year.

“It was a big surprise to find how many business opportunities there are in the Hawaiian marketplace,” she said.

But getting started was a minor adventure in red tape, reaffirming Hawaii’s reputation as a business environment that stifles entrepreneurship with high taxes and over-regulation.

Boughton and state officials walked Baggerly through the convoluted permit application process, which--despite a new county ordinance designed to expedite procedures--took six months longer than promised.

In the old days, it should be noted, it would have taken years. Boughton said early feasibility studies for the park found that the average start-up time for a business on Maui was seven years. Notwithstanding the new rhetoric, the old anti-growth, anti-business mentality apparently dies hard.

“That’s the nature of entrenched bureaucracy,” sighed Boughton. “The various divisions begin to take on agendas that are at cross-purposes to themselves.”

Baggerly is not complaining: “In Southern California I was all on my own. But here there are people who have a vested interest in helping us grow.”

Officials say promising software firms are taking root in the Mililani High Technology Park, an older development in central Oahu where the state’s Office of High Technology Development is based. Yet only only about 900 of Mililani’s purported goal of 9,000 high-tech jobs have materialized.

Gregory Pai, special economic assistant to the governor, said no one is looking for for an overnight transformation of Hawaiian industry.

“I don’t think there’s any fantasy that we’re going to be another Silicon Valley,” he said. “The issue is better balance and higher-paying jobs. And it’s not inconceivable that we could hit the jackpot.”