The words are right there on the website for the New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District:

“NASED will create a vibrant live-work-play-thrive destination on Oahu with a new multi-sport stadium serving as the centerpiece for a mixed-use real estate development on the existing 98-acre Aloha Stadium site located in Halawa.”

Live-work-play-thrive. The first word is the key. We want people living there. Lots of them.

The redevelopment of the Aloha Stadium complex on state-owned property is Hawaii’s single best route toward addressing the abysmal state of the islands’ affordable housing inventory.

Clearly, though, it’s going to take an enormous push from housing advocates and the general public to shepherd lawmakers toward a plan to do it the right way — combining a substantial number of housing units with the retail and entertainment mix that’s also part of the vision.

How many homes? That’s a subject for a conversation to get underway at the state Capitol, as a raft of bills dealing with the development work their way through the process.

What is already hindering this conversation, though, is a dismal rendering produced by the state Department of Accounting and General Services (DAGS) that shows 20,000 units packed into a tight warren of 53 mid-rise towers on 73 acres. The stadium itself is squeezed in as well.

This may have been intended to simply show the scale of what development would look like on that site, under existing height limits.

“We don’t consider building this concentration of tall towers a benefit to the community,” said Chris Kinimaka, public works administrator for DAGS, speaking last week to the Hawaii Society of Business Professionals.

The rendering was visually overwhelming, without a doubt, but this is not what it needs to look like.

A real master plan would include raised height limits for residential towers in some spots, to allow for some breathing space at the ground level. There would need to be a reengineering of the roads in the district to accommodate traffic increase. And, there would be the shops, restaurants and other attractions of an “entertainment district,” to complement a new stadium.

But this context has not been relayed to the general public, folks looking at the rendering with alarm. Their reaction: Is that what redevelopment looks like, once affordable housing is part of the plan? Is traffic going to be impassable?

No, it doesn’t have to be a hideous disaster, not if some rational thinking and creativity can be brought to the table.

The legislative bills in the hopper this year for the Halawa site propose housing capacity that ranges widely, from 20,000 to 75,000 homes. The upper end of that density scale may be a heavy lift, but it remains crucial to make significant gains against Oahu’s chronic housing shortfall. Lawmakers can’t lose sight of that.

The legislative effort was prodded through a public appeal by three former Hawaii governors — Neil Abercrombie, Ben Cayetano and John Waihee — who rightly argued for a much sharper focus on the housing agenda.

They also opposed building a new stadium there, but they’ve not made a persuasive argument for other options — an enlarged facility on the Manoa campus to fill University of Hawaii football needs — that would be adequate as solutions.

Still, the point is that housing has to be a pivotal element in NASED.

Here is a brief outline of the bills:

>> Senate Bill 2505 would propose building 20,000 units on 40 acres surrounding the stadium, and that 100,000 homes be developed nearby. Eighty percent would have to be affordable to households earning no more than 80% of the median income in Honolulu.

>> SB 2574 would direct 75,000 affordable rentals to be built on at least 73 acres surrounding the stadium. It’s introduced by state Sen. Stanley Chang, a proponent of a very ambitious, even aggressive housing agenda for the area. Last session, his SB 737, seeking 20,000 homes around the stadium and 100,000 nearby, languished without a hearing.

>> House Bill 2018 also would have 20,000 affordable units built on 73 acres, calling on the state’s Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corp. to complete a plan for it before the end of 2023.

Legislators face more than one serious imperative concerning Halawa this year. One is to see that NASED authorities stay on track for the request for proposals on the stadium itself, already delayed. If the state wants UH football to continue at its Division 1 level, there needs to be an appropriate place for it.

But on the larger question of how to turn a largely underdeveloped acreage in Halawa into the vibrant district being promised, one with a stadium as its centerpiece, know that it’s been done in other cities.

Meeting Hawaii’s specific needs requires housing for a mix of people, living in workforce apartments and rentals as well as market-priced condos, even visitors staying in transient accommodations.

If they’re serious about that live-work-play-thrive concept, NASED and state leaders have to remember what they’re being called to create.

A master-planned community. A place where people come and go — and many of them stay.