Christopher Hemmeter (October 8, 1939 – November 27, 2003)[1] was an American real estate developer who pioneered the concept of destination resorts in Hawaii and was involved in gambling development of casinos, primarily in New Orleans and Colorado.
[2] Christopher Hemmeter was born in 1939 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Los Altos in the San Francisco Bay area.
After attending Cornell University and graduating first in his class in 1962 he moved to Hawaii and got a job as a management trainee at the Sheraton Royal Hawaiian.
[5] The hotel was set in 560 acres (2.3 km2) and boasted two golf courses and a 2-acre (8,100 m2) reflecting pool, adding to the reported $775 million development cost.
Featured guest, author James Michener, wrote of the event, “It’s the kind of place God would have built if he had sufficient cash flow.”[6] Former Hawaii Governor Ben Cayetano called Hemmeter, "...a man of great vision and energy, More than anyone else, he changed the nature of resort development in Hawai'i.
[4] In September 1987 Hemmeter made a $100 million bid for Hawaiian Airlines which was accepted, but which was withdrawn in December of that year after the October 19th stock market crash.
[8] The developers estimated the casino would attract one million additional visitors to the city and would generate annual revenues of as much as $780 million, estimates that were based in part on the proven success of dockside gaming in the Mississippi Gulf Coast area.
[8] In 1993 a partnership of Hemmeter and Caesars World obtained the lease on the Rivergate property, which by law was the only place the land-based casino could be built in Louisiana, beating out a rival bid by Harrah's.
The poor location of the site resulted in the actual gaming take falling 60% below projections at only $13.1 million per month.