FIRST OF 2 PARTS

A site had been selected and in a moment of euphoria then-Honolulu Mayor Neal S. Blaisdell grandly proclaimed a vision for the stadium that would rise in Halawa.

"We are building this to last 75 years, so we want to go first class," Blaisdell declared.

That was in 1966, five years before the eventual groundbreaking and nine years prior to the much-delayed opening of what became Aloha Stadium.

By the time fans filed in for the Sept. 13, 1975, opener, the realities of finances and Hawaii politics had significantly reduced Blaisdell’s stated vision.

At that point, "they really thought it was going to last 30 years," remembers Jim Burns, who served on the Stadium Authority.

They’ve gotten that — and a lot of memories — out of a place that celebrated the conclusion of its 40th football season with the University of Hawaii’s home finale Saturday.

Conceived in controversy, christened with a curse, and doomed to decades of costly repairs and lawsuits, the 50,000-seat, 98.6-acre facility has nevertheless been the state’s largest window to the sporting and entertainment world. For its initial $37 million investment — and many times that in subsequent repairs — Hawaii has witnessed Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, the Eagles and the Rolling Stones dazzle on stage, and John Elway, Peyton Manning, Tony Gwynn and Pele star on the field.

UH quarterback Colt Brennan and the Rainbow Warriors crashed the Bowl Championship Series with an undefeated regular season (2007) there and Robbie Knievel crashed his motorcycle attempting to clear a 146-foot leap. (He made it the next night.)

And, true to the politics that often surrounded the stadium, one of the largest reported crowds, 49,701, was for a 1978 political rally for Gov. George Ariyoshi, who a rival had suggested "should be hung by his toes from the stadium rafters."

Aloha Stadium, indeed.

"So many moments, so many memories," said stadium manager Scott Chan, who played quarterback for Kaiser High School in the facility’s inaugural weekend.

As Brigham Young University’s head coach, LaVell Edwards brought nationally ranked football teams to Aloha Stadium, where he recalls encountering a "place where (the stands) shook and it got so loud sometimes you couldn’t hear yourself think — you had to have hand signals."

To this day, visiting high school and college teams often pause to take pictures of themselves under the "Aloha Stadium" signage.

Now, the state is on the clock with the stadium’s future. A state-commissioned study is in the third step of an eight-step process designed to help determine the fate of Hawaii’s biggest sporting venue.

At issue is whether the state will continue to shore up the facility at what is forecast to be a $120 million tab over the next five to 10 years, or lay out two or more times the amount to build a new one.

A study by Foley & Lardner, a New York firm hired to advise the Stadium Authority, recommended in June "a new 30,000- to 35,000-seat stadium on the lower portion of the stadium site" at a price of $132 million to $192 million.

Stadium Authority chairman Charles Toguchi has said, "While the summary includes observations and recommendations from Foley & Lardner, the Stadium Authority has not made any definitive decisions regarding the future of Aloha Stadium, as we look forward to analyzing the summary and soliciting feedback from the public."

GRAND VISIONS

At the opening of Aloha Stadium in 1975, stadium architect Charles Luckman proclaimed: "The people here are going to have a revolutionary type of stadium. There is no other like it in the world. Eventually, I think it will become a tourist attraction."

The idea of a facility to replace well-worn Honolulu Stadium gathered momentum upon statehood in 1959 when the so-called "Termite Palace" at King and Isenberg streets was 33 years old and showing its age.

In 1965 a fire marshal told the state Senate Committee on Higher Education that Honolulu Stadium had become a firetrap and should have been closed a decade earlier.

Two years later, Blaisdell declared, "We intend to go right ahead with construction of the stadium, feeling that it is an absolute necessity."

The Honolulu International Center, later to be renamed the Neal S. Blaisdell Center, had opened in 1964 as the successor to the 31-year-old Civic Auditorium and had proven to be a popular addition. Blaisdell said: "I’m reminded of all the original opposition to the (HIC) and I don’t think there is any doubt now about the wisdom of the project. It has been a real boon to the cultural life of the city."

For possible stadium sites, officials considered proposals that included Sand Island, the University of Hawaii quarry, McKinley High and Diamond Head Crater. Even the idea of a 40,000-seat "floating stadium" was offered up.

"If you picked 10 people at random and asked them their opinion on the stadium, I’d say you’d get 10 different responses," David McClung, then-state Senate president,said in 1971.

Ultimately, the mayor’s stadium committee selected an 80-acre site at Halawa Housing from which about 80 families would be removed. Their ouster would be part of the controversy that swirled around the project. At the groundbreaking, which drew a picket line with signs that declared, "Homes First, Stadium Second," one of the protesters reportedly placed a curse on the project.

But it soon became apparent that what Blaisdell had imagined — a $20 million state-of-the-art facility — would be too expensive for the city, and his successor at Honolulu Hale, Frank Fasi, opposed the use of city funds. Fasi derided it as a "white elephant" and maintained through his six terms as mayor that a cheaper, better one could have been built in town.

Visionary Gov. John A. Burns (1962-74) also wanted a stadium, seeing it as a building block to help address and overcome what he termed "a subtle inferiority of spirit" in the young state. "He was saying, ‘Hey folks, we’re just as good as the rest of the United States, so let’s show them that we are,’" recalls Jim Burns, his son.

Gov. Burns believed UH should — and could — have prestigious medical and law schools. And athletic teams. "Show me a university that is financially secure and I’ll show you its athletic foundation; show me a championship team and I’ll show you a student body academically driven by the same zeal of excellence," he said.

To advance UH, a small college independent, toward conference membership, it would need to grow. Gov. Burns saw a modern stadium as necessary to building a program and attracting top-drawer competition as he campaigned among fellow governors to get UH into the Western Athletic Conference.

As much as Burns sought the new stadium to be a launching pad for UH and a home for the high schools, competing interests wanted a baseball stadium for the Triple A Hawaii Islanders of the Pacific Coast League, who had arrived here from Sacramento in 1961.

One plan at the time involved side-by-side football and baseball facilities, but it was eventually deemed too expensive and impractical.

The state took over what was seen as a $41.4 million project, but the Legislature directed state comptroller Ke Nam Kim "to cut corners and keep the price within $27 million," according to a news report of the time.

The stadium opening was targeted to coincide with the January 1972 Hula Bowl — but was three and a half years late.

Two years after the "curse" was placed on the project, a workman was killed in a fall from the stands, prompting other workers to walk off the job. Later, a 10-week strike by sheet metal workers caused a delay, as did an exceptionally rainy fall in 1974. In addition, there were 127 change orders and several lawsuits.

The Rev. Abraham Akaka returned to bless the site a second time.

What Luckman, a Los Angeles architect who had designed the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., proposed to city officials and ultimately sold to the state was a multipurpose stadium that could change configurations with the aid of a revolutionary air cushion system. Moreover, girders were to be constructed with a "weathering steel" that it was said would be resistant to corrosion after an initial "protective patina" developed.

But the system became so unwieldy that it cost the stadium as much as $16,000 to change configurations. Eventually the stadium was locked in for football.

And by 1985 the state was forced to undertake a 10-year, $80 million corrosion abatement project after it was discovered that the steel was sensitive to salt air, which promoted corrosion, and that 3⁄8th-inch-thick channel beams used for stair supports had rusted through.

"People wanted a first-class stadium, but they didn’t want what it would cost," Jim Burns said.

Forty years later as the state looks to decide the future, the edifice at Kamehameha Highway and Salt Lake Boulevard offers plenty of lessons.