Builder Hemmeter Files for Personal Bankruptcy

Christopher B. Hemmeter, who amassed a fortune developing grandiose resort hotels in Hawaii and then sank much of it into a star-crossed plan to build the world’s largest casino in New Orleans, said Tuesday that he has filed for personal bankruptcy.

“We went from a net worth of $750 million down to zero in a matter of months,” the real estate developer said in an interview with The Times.

He said the bankruptcy proceeding would allow him to start over with new developments. “We anticipate we’ll be back,” he said. “We have some amazing, large projects coming.”

Hemmeter does, however, face other legal and financial clouds. A real estate investment trust he founded to develop properties in Colorado is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and investors in a Hemmeter company that operated a casino riverboat in Louisiana have sued him over the management of that company.

Documents filed late last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles say Hemmeter, who lives in Bel-Air, has about $720,000 in assets and $87 million in liabilities.

The blame, he said, rests entirely with the New Orleans project, which has produced little but a partially finished downtown building now mired in its own set of bankruptcy proceedings.

Hemmeter’s plan was for an $850-million, two-story building a short walk from New Orleans’ French Quarter.

In 1995, when a temporary casino drew less than one-third of the predicted business, Harrah’s Entertainment Inc.--by then a Hemmeter partner and the project manager--shut it down and placed the development under the protection of Bankruptcy Court. Harrah’s is threatening to liquidate the project if its proposed reorganization plan, under which Hemmeter’s residual stake would go to his creditors, fails to get court approval following a hearing Oct. 28.