About 250 business and political leaders from Leeward O'ahu gathered at the Honolulu Country Club in Salt Lake yesterday to celebrate how far West O'ahu has come and consider how much further it can go.

But despite dazzling presentations and grand pronouncements from everyone from the governor to CEOs, the central character at the Fourth Annual West Oahu Conference was a rodent.

Speakers from Gov. Linda Lingle to Ko Olina developer Jeff Stone spent the day mapping out prospects for the region's future that include dozens of additional businesses and organizations, thousands of new jobs, millions in spending on public improvements and billions in generated revenues.

Lingle praised the people of West O'ahu for their innovation in creating the new community and added, "Right now the state has hundreds of millions of dollars in projects under way in your region — projects that will indeed make your vision of a Second City a reality."

Jeffrey Arce, chief financial officer for The MacNaughton Group, gave the crowd a "virtual preview" of Kapolei Commons, a 650,000-square-foot concept retail mall his company expects to open in Kapolei by Christmas 2009.

The conference, co-sponsored by the West Oahu Economic Development Association and Enterprise Honolulu, covered a broad spectrum of diversified retail and nonprofit economic growth coming to the area.

But one topic that came up repeatedly during the day was one that Arce referred to as "the rodent problem," followed by an image of Mickey Mouse twirling across the ballroom viewing screen and landing in the middle of a map of Ko Olina Resort — to the laughter and delight of the audience.

Arce then described the coming of Disney's entertainment resort hotel at Ko Olina as a "good rodent problem."

Stone, who worked for months to entice reluctant Disney executives to commit to building a "fun, active family destination" at Ko Olina, explained why he thought Disney in Hawai'i would also end up being an unbelievably profitable rodent problem.

"This is an incredible feat for the state," said Stone. Disney is not only one of the largest companies in the world, it is the single largest entertainment company with 132,000 employees and grosses more than $35 billion annually.

"They have decided to come to Hawai'i and spend what will amount to about a billion dollars to build the grandest resort in the world — not a theme park," he said. "There won't be any rides. There aren't going to be any submarines. You may see a pirate or two."

You may also see Disney bringing in more than 1,000 jobs, said Stone — many going to area residents who will go through an on-resort training program.

Stone predicted that Disney's move to Hawai'i would generate more than $100 million a year in international publicity for the state.

Lingle, during her keynote address, said that while she is excited that Disney chose Ko Olina for its first resort ever built outside one of its own theme parks, there was something else about the company that piqued her interest.

That, she said, are those things the company can bring to the community that have nothing to do with real estate, resorts or development.

"As you may know, Disney owns Pixar, Disney owns ESPN, Disney owns a lot of companies that can be very valuable to us in the future," she said. "And they are one of the major innovators in the world today in the area of robotics and technology and communications and digital media.

"And those are the areas that our young people are also interested in."

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.