Rodriguez to be Central Pacific CFO

Larry Rodriguez has been appointed chief financial officer of Central Pacific Financial Corp. and its primary subsidiary, Central Pacific Bank.

Rodriguez has more than 40 years of experience in the financial services industry and previously served as managing partner of Ernst & Young LLP’s Hawaii office. He had been a consultant to Central Pacific Bank since January.

The CFO position has been vacant since June 1 when Dean Hirata stepped down.

HUD offering $189 million in grants

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is making $189 million in grant money available to public housing authorities, developers, nonprofits and local governments for improving subsidized and public housing projects nationwide.

The agency expects to distribute five to six awards up to $22 million each through its HOPE VI revitalization program to help transform distressed public housing projects into mixed-income communities. The application deadline is Nov. 22.

Previous HOPE VI revitalization awards totaling $6.1 billion have been made to 132 housing authorities since 1993, HUD said.

HUD also is providing grant money through a new program called Choice Neighborhoods, which aims to help finance redevelopment of public and HUD-assisted housing projects.

The agency expects to award 12 to 15 grants each up to $250,000 for planning, and another two to four implementation grants up to $31 million each. The application deadline is Oct. 26.

Both types of grants are available to public housing authorities, local governments, nonprofits and for-profit developers that apply jointly with a public entity.

Applications are available online at grants.gov.

Hawaiian Air tapped to fly Seahawks

Hawaiian Airlines has been selected as the charter airline of the National Football League’s Seattle Seahawks for the upcoming season and will fly the team to its first of 10 road games tomorrow at Minnesota.

The airline also will fly the Seahawks to Oakland, Calif., during the preseason, followed by regular-season road games against Denver, St. Louis, Chicago, Oakland, Arizona, New Orleans, San Francisco and Tampa Bay.

Hawaiian also provided the Seahawks with charter flights to road games in 2008.

In addition, Hawaiian flies the Oakland Raiders to road games.

Big Isle affordable rentals complete

Nearly two years of construction of a 306-unit affordable rental housing complex called Lokahi Apartments in Kailua-Kona is complete.

Developer Vitus Group Inc., formerly called Pacific Housing Advisors, plans to hold a blessing ceremony Tuesday that will be attended by Gov. Linda Lingle and Big Island Mayor Billy Kenoi.

The $60 million project was funded through the sale of state and federal affordable-housing tax credits, $33.5 million in tax-exempt bonds, an $11.75 million loan from the state’s Hawaii Housing Finance Development Corp. and private financing from Citibank.

ON THE MOVE

Sopogy has announced the following:

» Tina Sprague as Hawaii energy project development manager. She has 22 years of business development, marketing and operations experience including working management and marketing roles at Microsoft Corp., CTA Solutions, Oceanit and Hawaii Energy.

» Tom Hindmarsh as director of technology. He has 23 years of technology development experience and was previously lead engineer at Resonance Project Foundation as well as worked management roles at Intel Corp., Sandia National Labs and PRI Automation.

Distributed Energy Partners and RevoluSun have hired Honolulu attorney Colin A. Yost as principal and general counsel. His experience includes being a founding partner of the law firm Cruise & Yos..

Scott Bell has been named "Prosecutor of the Year" for 2009 by Llorente SIU, a leading contract special investigative unit service provider. Bell is a city deputy prosecuting attorney and received the award by doing an "extraordinary" job of fighting insurance fraud.