Construction workers won’t start seeing the benefits of the numerous projects recently making headlines in Hawaii until the end of this year or early next year, Central Pacific Bank CEO John Dean said Wednesday.

The influx of condominium developments coming online, as well as the build-out of Oahu’s rail system, have yet to be felt by the state’s financial institutions and others.

"Banks collectively will be financing those developments," said Dean, head of the state’s fourth-largest bank. "While commitments have been made, until those lines of credit are drawn down, there won’t be the use of the money. That will start at the end of this year, the beginning of next year. So the benefits are still to come for the banking industry, and it will be the same with employment.

"People think today that benefit is moving the economy. All those (construction) announcements, until they break ground, until they start to hire people, until they start to draw down on their lines of credit, that’s all future positives."

Dean, in an interview with the Star-Advertiser, also defended the U.S. Treasury’s bailout of his bank even though the Treasury ended up losing $63 million.

When Dean came onboard in March 2010, Central Pacific already had received a $135 million bailout from the U.S. Treasury through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, more commonly known as TARP.

Over the past three years, Dean put together a management team and recapitalized the bank with $325 million, primarily from private-equity investors. That led to nine straight profitable quarters after the bank lost $703.1 million from 2008 through 2010.

The Treasury got back all but $63 million of its cash-for-stock investment in Central Pacific.

"There’s two sides to a coin, so the way I look at it is the government didn’t lose $63 million, the government helped out banks throughout the country — not just ours but Citibank and others — and collectively the U.S. government made money. Some they lost, others they made, but net net they came out whole."

Through April, nearly $271 billion has been recovered from TARP’s bank programs through repayments, dividends, interest and other income, according to the Treasury’s latest monthly report to Congress. That represents a more than $25 billion positive return compared with the $245 billion invested in those institutions.

"So it was a great program," Dean said. "We did not pay back in full, but without TARP this bank would not have survived. So I look at it as a wonderful investment by the government. They kept our 950 employees at Central Pacific Bank. So to me it was a wonderful program and I think it played a key role in the survival of this institution."

Dean, 65, said it could take another three years before getting Central Pacific where he wants it to be, but he is happy with the direction the bank and the economy are heading.

He is at his fifth bank — four of them turnaround situations. While he said he doesn’t label himself as a turnaround expert, it’s a description he accepts.

"Someone, somewhere, either here or in a prior life labeled me the turnaround expert and it’s the label I don’t seem to be able to get away from," Dean said. "I guess there are worse labels, so if I have to have one, I’d prefer that one over something negative."

He said turning around Central Pacific included putting together a team that could return the bank to profitability.

"I would like to think that my strengths include an ability to grow a bank over time, so it’s just not turning it around but can you grow quality earnings over time?" Dean said. "I think we’re doing that here, but we’ve still got a long way to go."

Dean said Central Pacific was one of the most, if not the most, severe turnaround situations he encountered in terms of the size of the losses. The bank had more than $1 billion in assets in the ill-fated mainland real estate market and, during his first quarter at the bank, it had $496 million in nonperforming assets — loans delinquent for 90 days or more — mostly on the mainland.

"There was no question this bank had to be recapitalized," he said. "We had lost most of our capital."

But Dean said the "core franchise" was still there.

"The thing probably most attractive to the private-equity investors — those who would participate in this $325 million offering — was that even through the losses, the strength of the core deposits, the strength of our client base, had stayed with us. You would have thought that if we were maybe a bank in another state we wouldn’t have the loyalty or support that we got here."

With the bank no longer in turnaround mode, Dean is looking at moving the bank forward.

"The next challenge for us is really getting the bank to be one of the top-performing banks in the country," he said. "In terms of return on assets, in terms of return on equity, in terms of efficient ratio (all measurements of a bank’s financial performance), it’s going to take another three years with a lot of hard work."