David Shapiro: New Aloha Stadium plan must still pass pencil test

The Incredible Shrinking New Aloha Stadium is losing support outside of construction interests that would profit from it, and the Green administration and Legislature must explain the plan so it makes more sense before public opinion terminally sours.

The latest idea is for a public-private partnership in which the state would put up $400 million in public funds along with development rights to the 90 surrounding Halawa acres, in exchange for a private partner taking responsibility for designing, building, operating and maintaining a new stadium.

The big rub is that the facility, once pitched as 35,000 comfortable seats with a partial roof for shading, might end up a more bare-bones 25,000 bleacher seats with no covering.

This would be giving up $400 million and control of valuable state lands to essentially rebuild the old Honolulu Stadium, except with less charm — a big step down from the current 50,000-seat Aloha Stadium, built in 1975 for $25 million.

The prevailing public response, to borrow a euphemism Gov. Josh Green once applied to the project, is it’s “f$&ked up.”

GREEN INHERITED A MUDDLE with few options.

The Legislature pushed a new stadium after the existing facility was shut in 2019 for lack of maintenance, with promises that it would cost $300 million, open by the 2023 University of Hawaii football season and in no way resemble the Honolulu rail fiasco.

It has looked a lot like rail as the Legislature changed funding and altered management several times, and former Gov. David Ige ditched the public-­private partnership in favor of a simpler design- build contract.

Opening has been pushed to 2028 at the earliest, and UH football, the biggest tenant, is treating a new stadium as more of an “if” than a “when” as it expands its on-campus Ching Complex to 15,000 seats to meet NCAA requirements.

If the best we can do at Halawa for $400 million is 25,000 bleacher seats and vague notions of costly future expansion, it makes more sense to expand the Ching Complex to as close as it can get to that capacity for a fraction of the cost and use the Halawa site for affordable housing.

WHEN RUNNING FOR OFFICE, Green supported the public-private partnership on the condition it include more affordable housing.

But in March he said he would drop the P3 and separate building a stadium from developing the surrounding land, preferring a more efficient design- build-manage-maintain contract.

By the end of the Legislature, he was back to a modified P3 that would combine the contracts for developing the stadium and the surrounding land.

The state, which spent $25 million on previous planning, is entering a “market sounding” period with developers on the new plan and hopes to seek requests for qualifications from potential partners — a process that officials already went through on the earlier two-contract plan — by the end of the year.

As with the ill-fated rail P3, there’s a risk the ultimate bids could come in far higher than the $400 million the Legislature budgeted.

A new stadium would have support if we got 35,000 shaded, modern seats for $400 million, but the original promise drifts further away.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.