Scott Chan has seen a lot of history go down at Aloha Stadium through the years.

That’s because he has been working there for about half of its 41-year existence, joining the 50,000-seat, $37 million Halawa facility as its assistant events manager in 1995 and becoming stadium manager in 2007.

Highlights have included performances by world-famous musical groups and record-breaking games by the University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors. On the downside, there’s been the slow deterioration of what used to be a state-of-the-art facility — which even included movable seating sections to accommodate different events — that now requires large amounts of money to keep it from being a health and safety hazard.

More recently, the stadium was the focus of bad publicity due to traffic and parking problems associated with the NFL’s 2016 Pro Bowl, and when the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team canceled a December appearance due to alleged problems with the stadium’s field turf.

The stadium’s physical condition has the Aloha Stadium Authority and many lawmakers pondering what should be the next move: the status quo or a new facility entirely. Either way, Chan is upbeat about its long-range future, though nobody is certain what that will be.

Before joining Aloha Stadium, Chan worked as a teacher and a coach at Kaiser High School, after earning a bachelor’s degree in science and education from Willamette University in Oregon.

He also was a student athlete at Kaiser; he was the first quarterback for the new school’s football team, which in 1975 under head coach Ron Lee (and his brother Cal Lee as defensive coordinator) made it to an OIA district championship facing Farrington, held — where else? — at Aloha Stadium. The team “came up short,” Chan said, losing 18-14.

Now 58, Chan is married to the former Debbie Mitsui. They have two adult children and live in East Honolulu.

Question: What are some of the big issues facing the stadium today?

Answer: Well, there are many. We have to understand that it’s been 41 years that this facility has served the state, and the facility as Aloha Stadium probably seems to be approaching the end of its life-cycle threshold. There have been many studies analyzing the situation, on the facility itself and, of course, the challenges of the evolving market and the purpose that these facilities serve.

Q: What would you like to see?

A: Well, I just manage, operate and maintain the facility. Those decisions will have to come from those higher-ups that we work closely with: the administrators, the legislators, as well as Stadium Authority board that sets policy for this facility.

I think we’re waiting for the results of some of these studies, and they will help us determine whether we continue to renovate this facility in its entirety and address health and safety issues, or do we consider looking at building a new facility.

Q: What is your annual budget now?

A: Our budget we ask annually is $9.2 million.

Q: That covers everything?

A: No. … We operate without general funds with the exception of CIP monies toward facilities maintenance, so we go in and ask for that at the legislative session.

Q: And how much does that add up to?

A: Well, it depends. I think since 2005 we’ve infused close to … just under $100 million in capital improvements. But in the last biennium, we didn’t get any money.

Q: Why?

A: Well, you can see that there are other priorities in the state, and those decisions are up to the policymakers.

Q: Is this part of the whole thing about how, I think it was Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who he said he didn’t want to put any more money into the stadium?

A: That’s part of it. That’s the reason we’re conducting these studies — to make sure that we do the right thing for the state of Hawaii.

Q: What kind of feedback are you getting — that it should be a smaller stadium, somewhere else, or both?

A: Some of the things that we can almost assume moving forward is that we want to make sure that it’s a large-scale venue that can support sporting, entertainment and community events, and is of value to the state of Hawaii and to its people. It’s not just a football stadium, which most people believe. It’s a community asset. And we have a variety of events, not just football.

Q: Do you think it would stay where it is?

A: That’s one of the other assumptions. I think it only makes sense to most that it remain here at the centralized part of the island, and having part of the infrastructure already in place, instead of having to address that moving somewhere else.

Among other assumptions, again, it’s the purpose of the authority and the stadium property to serve the community and that the benefits remain. So we take the community’s input seriously. We already had two outreach workshops for the community … working with TOD (transit-oriented development). They (city officials working on TOD) have been very supportive and helpful in terms of providing us some support and background in developing the property, if we have an opportunity to do that.

Q: Who owns that land?

A: Right now DLNR (the state Department of Land and Natural Resources) owns the land, and we are just one of the landlords, and in order for us to try and create a major destination for Hawaii, knowing that we have all these projects coming together, such as HART (the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation) being on our property, we want to make sure we take advantage of that, and create another major destination not only for our locals and our community but for visiting guests as well, especially being in a great location, right across from the Arizona Memorial, which is one of our top tourist attractions here in the islands, which brings in almost 2 million visitors.

Q: If you have a rail station there, that’s going to take up a lot of parking, and we know that’s an issue already. How many acres have you got there anyway?

A: We have close to a hundred acres.

Q: And the stadium takes up how much?

A: At least 10 acres.

Q: And parking is all the rest?

A: Well, it could be. But we’d like to see if there’s opportunity for mixed development, if we’re able to lift the deed restrictions. There’s a federal deed restriction and a city deed restriction.

Q: What does the city restriction say?

A: It allows public and recreational use only.

Q: And the federal one?

A: They’re both the same, but the city’s is a little stricter because they’re saying you have to have a stadium or facility on your property as well.

Q: So who has to lift that?

A: Well, we’ve already made some progress with the city side. As of March 2016, the City Council has approved Resolution 16-69, to lift the deed restriction, so all we’re doing now is making sure the right signatures are on those documents. On the federal side we’ve been working with the National Park Service group within the Department of the Interior to lift the federal restriction, and we’re just completing some of the responses that are going back and forth, with the hope of getting the deed restriction lifted sooner than later as well.

Q: What kind of non-recreational properties did you have in mind?

A: I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but we’re looking at an opportunity to generate new revenues to help sustain this facility, to alleviate some of the burden on taxpayers.

Q: Is it true that about a third of the parking has been taken away (because of rail)?

A: That’s correct. Right now we have close to only 7,000 stalls … because over a thousand stalls have been taken away due to the construction at the Kamehameha lot. So you can just do the math yourself. That’s not very much parking for anywhere from a 30,000-crowd-in-attendance and up. … If we hit 30,000, it’s going to be a challenging day.

Q: So where does everyone go? Is there a problem with overflow?

A: Well, there’s no doubt it’s overflow. So we’re trying to reach out a little bit farther and to direct drivers to alternative sites. … That would be at Leeward Community College, with 800 stalls. And we would have Kam Drive-In — that has several hundred stalls — as well as Aiea Intermediate and Elementary and Radford High School. Several of the sites provide shuttle services. Also, we incorporate Ford Island during the bigger events, so we shuttle those people back and forth as well. So there’s ample parking; just not ample parking on our property.

Q: How many events a year do you host?

A: We have anywhere to 275 to 300 events annually. Many of them overlap, like the 50th State Fair carnival and high school graduations. We also have our swap meet that overlaps with events in the stadium, such as football, Pop Warner events on the weekends. … We’re quite busy.

Q: How many people work there?

A: We have 38.5 full-time employees.

Q: 38.5?

A: Yes, 38.5. It’s a half a position. And then we also have, on any given day during a major event, we can hire up to anywhere from 600 to 700 part-time, intermittent employees. So a lot of recruiting takes place during the off-season.

Q: Will we ever see professional baseball in the stadium again?

A: It will be difficult because back in 2007, I think, the board decided to lock the facility into football configuration. They felt it was … more cost-effective to lock it into one configuration than to keep moving it back and forth every year.

Q: You mean the seating sections that were supposed to roll on the tracks?

A: That’s correct. It was becoming more costly because it was aging. … and they decided in our best interest that it would be better to lock it into one configuration, for soccer and football.

Q: Speaking of which, is there still a lawsuit pending with the women’s soccer people (who canceled an event because of alleged turf problems)?

A: We’re one of the defendants in the class-action lawsuit (brought by people who had purchased tickets), but unfortunately it’s still ongoing so I can’t really comment to that.

Q: Is there any kind of lawsuit going on with the NFL about the Pro Bowl right now?

A: No. And since you’re bringing that up, I think it’s a good segue to talk about the field turf: It’s always been in the plans for us to replace the field turf in 2017. But we decided to move it up because of the significant competition that we were receiving to host the 2017 Pro Bowl. We are making every effort to replace the field and put ourselves in the best possible and most attractive position to be considered to host the game once again.

Q: Do you think we’ll ever get it back?

A: We’re hopeful. I think this might be a good opportunity for both to take a look at what the Pro Bowl means to each, and we will know that through the next term of this contract.

Q: With the mess we had with the Pro Bowl — people stuck in traffic while they were still trying to get there, and once they got there they still couldn’t get in because of the long lines — how did that happen? Do you guys coordinate with the police?

A: It involves a lot of coordination with many involved. You have to understand that when we work with each client, the requests are different. And when we work with the Pro Bowl, they bring in all these consultants to address all these areas, so a lot of our operational methods get tweaked and changed along the way, because that’s what the client wishes to do. And therein lies some of the challenges that we have sometimes — trying to coordinate what we believe would be in the best interests of everyone, but at the same time, too, serving the client because they’re bringing the event to our facility.

Q: I’m a little unclear about whom to blame, but was that partly why the NFL decided not to come back for the next two years — there’s just too much uncertainty with the HART station taking up all the parking, and poor traffic coordination and things like that?

A: No, that had nothing to do with the decision they made. It had everything to do with, I guess, promoting the NFL. They felt they needed to have it in an area where they had more professional football teams, where they could reach out a little bit farther. That’s what I understood.

Q: So are you guys ready for UH football? Are we going to have people having a hard time finding parking and long lines outside the stadium waiting to get in because of security?

A: Well, that’s never what we want to see. I think we all want to create a very pleasant and enjoyable experience for everyone, not just on our property but as they come to it.