Aloha Stadium was more or less condemned in December for future events with spectators, but the parking lot around the rusted 50,000-seat complex is being booked for a growing array of attractions.

Stadium managers have been lining up a series of events recently on the black plain of pitted asphalt radiating outward from the 46-year-old stadium on 98 acres in Halawa, including a laser light show, a drive-in dinner show and monthly craft fairs.

Drive-in movies, drive-in concerts and car races also are being pursued at the longtime home of a swap meet that has continued during the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays on portions of the massive stadium parking lot with 7,476 spaces.

Board members of the Stadium Authority, a state agency that manages the property, recently approved the dinner and laser light shows.

The drive-in laser show will feature two nightly 40-minute shows held over 12 days from Thursday through Sunday between April 8 and 25.

This special event, which would project terminal lasers onto 40-foot screens with choreographed music transmitted to car stereos, is a production of a Georgia company that typically produces hot-air balloon festivals but pivoted to laser shows because of COVID-19.

“It turned out to be very successful,” Jeremy Kwaterski, a principal of Hot Air Balloon Management Inc., told the Stadium Authority board in January.

Mike Nakata, CEO of Kaneohe-based Non Profit Fundraising Partners of Hawaii, received agency approval last month to negotiate terms for a drive-in dinner show featuring live performers on a stage and an audio setup with sound transmitted into cars via radio.

A new repeating event that started Sunday is a series of craft fairs piggybacking on the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet once a month.

The craft fairs, hosted by 808 Craft and Gift Fairs, so far are scheduled for every third Sunday of the month through Aug. 15, and followed a successful trial event in December that drew 50 crafters. About twice as many initially signed up for upcoming dates, according to the Stadium Authority.

Special events in Aloha Stadium’s parking lot are not new, but before COVID-19 were more sporadic. Now a flurry of events is being drawn to the site where much room exists to social- distance in compliance with coronavirus restrictions.

The flurry was largely kicked off by a Christmas lights display for drive-thru viewing. The event, dubbed “Show Aloha Land,” ran 44 consecutive nights from the day after Thanksgiving to Jan. 9.

This event, organized in part by the nonprofit S.A.C. Foundation (Show Aloha Challenge), featured a million lights arranged in holiday scenes synchronized to music delivered over the radio.

Drive-thru food offerings also were part of the production, which consistently drew over 1,000 vehicles nightly and was declared a “huge success” by the Stadium Authority.

Last week on Valentine’s Day, a drive-in evening concert dubbed “Moonlight Mele” was held featuring Hawaiian music groups the Makaha Sons, Maunalua, Natalie Ai Kamauu and Sean Naauao performing onstage to an audience that listened to the live music in their cars via the radio.

Henry “Hanale” Ka‘anapu of Ha Ka Entertainment, the event’s co-producer, said the concert was a unique opportunity for entertainers to work again, and provided attendees with a “somewhat normal” show experience.

Ka‘anapu said the concert drew 83 carloads of people who paid $75 per vehicle in advance or $100 at the entry gate, and that the turnout was a success, given the event was promoted for only one week.

“We feel confident that given a proper promotional timeline and strategy, we could easily sell 300 tickets,” he said.

More Moonlight Mele concerts are being lined up for the stadium parking lot, with the next one March 20.

Samantha Spain, a Stadium Authority sales and marketing specialist, attended the concert and said it was something to behold, with audience members honking car horns and flashing headlights instead of traditional applause.

“There was still that interaction between the entertainers onstage and the audience,” she said. “It was amazing.”

To be sure, recent parking lot events pale in scope compared with prior major special entertainment productions held in the stadium, which included a 2019 Eminem concert that filled the bleachers with 28,216 fans, and a pair of monster truck rallies and a motorcycle off-road race the same year that attracted 77,871 fans over three days.

Such mega-events, however, aren’t being held amid the pandemic, and the stadium has been declared out of order ahead of a new one expected to be built a few years from now.

To make hosting more parking lot events easier, the stage, a video wall and other infrastructure used for Moonlight Mele will remain on-site for use by other event organizers.

Spain said users of the setup are expected to include high school graduation ceremonies this summer.

In the past, such ceremonies featured graduates on the stadium field and friends and family in the stands. The new model is envisioned to allow graduates on the field with spectators in the parking lot.