Stadium Authority Proposes to Add 16,000 More Seats

Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.

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Faced with a growing number of spectators and increasing operating costs, officials are laying plans to arrange Aloha Stadium’s stands permanently in either a football or baseball configuration and fill in the gaps with extra bleachers.

Such a move would allow up to 16,600 additional seats at the Halawa facility and cut the huge costs of changing the stands twice a year, according to Charles Bessette, stadium general manager. …

Actual construction would not begin for at least five years, but $100,000 will be allocated in the 1983 budget so specific plans can be drawn up, Bessette said. …

The idea likely will not be well received by many who enjoy the stadium’s moving stands, especially since Aloha Stadium is the only one of its kind in the country. Bessette conceded that “there will be some complaints.”

But he said the stadium’s maintenance costs and expenses involved in actually moving the stands are astronomical and will continue to rise. Also, the stadium already is filled to capacity for many football games and additional seats will be needed in coming years, Bessette said.

The stadium design was hailed as “revolutionary” when it was conceived by Los Angeles architect Charles Luckman in the 1960s. Each movable grandstand weighs about 3.5 million pounds and moves along a concrete runway on 104 “air bearings” which literally lift the stands to minimize friction. Attempts to reach Luckman in California about the proposal were unsuccessful. …

It now costs about $25,000 to change the configuration, and that is done twice a year, Bessette said. As the stadium gets older, the cost of maintenance on the mechanisms to move the grandstands also increases. The time that it takes to move the stands has increased as the stadium has aged. It originally took only three days to change the configuration, but the latest move, just before this year’s football season, took seven days. …

The plan to make the stadium stands immovable already has attracted the support of some public officials, including state Sen. Neil Abercrombie, a member of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.