The urgency for a decision on the future of deteriorating, 42-year-old Aloha Stadium was underlined Wednesday by a consultant’s report detailing how the rusting facility has become a growing burden to the state.

The “Aloha Stadium Conceptual Redevelopment Report” warned the stadium has “served its useful life and is now a liability to fan experiences, a potential danger to public health and safety, and a financial burden for maintenance and operations.”

The 181-page report, which was unanimously approved by the Stadium Authority along with a 300-plus page structural review, also said that “inspections have identified pieces of the building that have actually fallen into public areas of the facility (fortunately the stadium was vacant at the time) bringing to reality the venue’s immediate and long-term risks to fans, the Stadium Authority and the State of Hawaii.”

Stadium manager Scott Chan said, “There’s always risk with an aging facility. At this time, though, it is a facility that is still operable and a safe facility to come to.”

The report, commissioned by the state Department of Accounting and General Services, recommends building a new, smaller 30,000- to 35,000-seat stadium expandable to 40,000 seats, adjacent to the current facility, as part of a redevelopment master plan of the 98-acre parcel in Halawa. The post-demolition hole left by the current stadium would become a three-level parking structure under the plan.

Such a stadium would cost $324.5 million in 2017 dollars, far less than just the basic health and safety costs of $423 million that would be required to keep the current facility operational for another 25 years, the report says.

It has taken nearly 3-1/2 years to get to this point, and authority chairman Ross Yamasaki cautioned, “One of our biggest enemies here, our greatest challenge, to deal with is time. Time ages the building, which increases risk because it just gets older. There are cost escalations on both sides with regard to the development time and because there is escalation in construction costs. So, the sooner we can make decisions the better.”

Yamasaki said the ultimate decision “is out of the authority’s hands” and is up to the governor and Legislature. “We are just trying to provide the decision-makers with the best information that we can.”

New York-based consultant Irwin Raij said acceptance of the report did not bind the state to the concept laid out in the study. “I view this (report) as a starting point, a real starting point for discussion and debate on what can be done with this site.”

The 50,000-seat stadium opened in 1975 at a cost of $37 million but soon ran into additional costs to deal with rust and other problems.

Since its opening, the report notes, “There have been no major structural updates to Aloha Stadium and it has now accumulated $423 million in deferred maintenance, including $120 million that is needed in American with Disabilities Act (ADA)-related improvements.”

Since 2005, costs for maintenance alone have reached $107 million and it would cost the state $30 million a year in just basic health and safety maintenance to keep the facility operational for 25 years, Raij said. But the state has averaged just $10 million a year “in good years,” Raij said.

With each year that a new facility is pushed back, construction costs climb “a minimum of 5 percent per year,” Raij said.

Officials estimated, citing a DAGS timetable, that at the current pace it could be seven years before a new stadium was to begin operation. Actual construction, once the site was “shovel- ready,” would take 18 to 24 months, Raij estimated.

Under the plan presented Wednesday, the stadium and adjacent rail station would serve as “anchors” for ancillary and mixed-use development that could be worth $1.5 billion in economic benefits to the state.

The ancillary development would help defray the costs of building the new stadium. “As the result of having a smaller (stadium) we’d have a broader footprint to build ancillary development,” Raij said. “Our analysis (showed) 2.6 million square feet of ancillary development is possible on this site.”

Retaining the swap meet also was part of the planning, officials said.

The facility proposed by the study would be a U-shaped bowl open at the north end, which planners said would “provide a ‘window’ into the stadium from the adjoining ancillary development and stadium plaza, emphasizing the synergy between the new multi-use venue and the adjacent mixed-use district. The open end of the stadium would feature a sloping grass berm, where spectators could casually watch events in a picnic-like atmosphere.”

Consultants said the new venue would be more attractive to concert promoters and international sports events.

The report said that once operations were stabilized, the new stadium “could generate approximately $5.2 million in annual income … after funding of a capital reserve but prior to any revenue sharing with the stadium’s primary tenant.”

With sufficient, self-generating capital reserve, officials said, the stadium would not be dependent on the state for annual maintenance costs.

The current stadium generates its operational and payroll costs but requires state funding for maintenance and repair.

Meanwhile, the current stadium sits.

In its “Structural and Safety Evaluations: Weathering steel corrosion assessment,” Wiss, Janney, Elster Associates Inc. says, “The unpredictability of future corrosion-related structural damage leads to the recommendation that recurring structural (two-year) inspections take place so that active corrosion can be identified before the extent of corrosion-related damage reduces calculated structural capacity of a member or connection to a level below structural acceptability.”

The WJE report calls for “the next recurring inspection of the existing Aloha Stadium is recommended to be completed no later than February 2018, unless conditions come to light that warrant a shorter interval between inspections.”

Chan, the stadium manager, said, “We know it is an aging facility. It is (42) years old. It needs a lot of tender loving care … but by no means is it unsafe.”