The good thing about Aloha Stadium is that it was built at a time when Hawaii was filled with bravado asserting that America’s newest state could compete with the big boys.
It would be a 50,000-seat wonder allowing the University of Hawaii football team to draw national-caliber opponents, in a stadium with grandstands that would rise on cushions of high-pressure air to move from baseball to football configurations. It would be an entertainment magnet luring the likes of Michael and Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, The Rolling Stones, Bruno Mars and Eminem. All the while serving as the locus for high school football.
And the top selling point: It would not rust. Special steel and treatments would laugh in the face of Hawaii’s tradewind-driven salt air; this baby would last.
Now for the bad stuff. It did rust. It needed continual upkeep, and the additional irony was that it lasted beyond its years while no one possessed the urgency to actually build a replacement.
Aloha Stadium gave Hawaii what it needed for a long enough time. For its 45-year existence, the venue was the home of the University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors, and hosted 35 Pro Bowls from 1980 to 2016. It was also home base for the Hawaii Islanders of the minor league baseball Pacific Coast League (’76 to ’87).
Its closure in 2020 wasn’t done in secret. Discussions, plans and studies all were done for a new facility. The only thing lacking is some action.
Even outgoing Gov. David Ige, who if nothing else worships at the temple of advanced planning, has yet to give the public a plan.
And now with days, not years, left to his term of office, Ige said he is just about ready to announce his plans, which are expected to be a retread of old plans.
Meanwhile, even state officials can see that Ige is still a bit late.
Because Ige is considering a revision of existing plans already in the works, the bureaucracy is already lined up waiting for Ige to pull the trigger.
On the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s livestream “Spotlight Hawaii” program last week, Aloha Stadium manager Ryan Andrews and Chris Kinimaka, public works administrator with the state Department of Accounting and General Services, said they are ready.
“We’ve been waiting for that green light,” said Andrews. “So I think my concern is any change at this point will cause a delay or will cause us to have to start over, and that’s what I would hate to see, is to start this process over and to kick this project out even further.’
State Sen. Glenn Wakai, who runs the committee with jurisdiction over the stadium, was less tactful in describing Ige’s ability to do the job.
“I just don’t understand when we have almost eight years of paralysis, why would this administration wake up two months before they’re about to leave and cause so much confusion? Just quietly, go away and let the next governor, whoever that may be, take over and run this project,” Wakai said in a Hawaii Public Radio interview.
“We’ve spent $20 million in two years on consultants and planners to get us to this point. And if we’re going backward, you’re going to start from zero — that is a total waste of time and a total waste of money,” he told HPR’s Catherine Cruz.
As the days slip off Ige’s retirement calendar, the one certainty is that on Dec. 5, 2022, Hawaii’s ninth elected governor will be sworn into office and Hawaii will still not have a new stadium.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.
