Two teams were announced Thursday as finalists for the job of developing, building, operating and maintaining the New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District, or NASED.

One will be chosen for the project, with the focal point a 25,000-30,000-seat stadium that will open in time for the 2028 football season. The same team will be allowed to build real estate including new businesses and thousands of homes that are also part of the long-term public- private partnership plan that includes $400 million in state funding.

There will be a community engagement conference May 6 at the existing Aloha Stadium, where the two groups will address concerns and try to gain support from Halawa-area community leaders.

The finalists have until July 31 to submit proposals, with one chosen by Sept. 30. A final agreement is targeted for June 30, 2025, at which time the winning team will tear down the existing stadium.

Construction is expected to take three years.

A NASED project consultant said the state expects that some housing will be completed at the same time the new stadium is.

“We’re projecting all of (the housing and other real estate) over 20 years,” David Harris of WT Partnerships said. “But in the initial phase, some housing will be concurrent with the stadium.”

The finalists, called “priority listed offerors” by the state, were announced more than two weeks ahead of the April 15 deadline. Some will see it as a minor victory in a project that has changed direction several times since the old stadium hosted its last game in 2021.

But Gov. Josh Green and others are optimistic.

“That this is moving forward ahead of schedule speaks highly of the state employees and private sector partners working to bring this project to fruition,” Green said in a release. “In addition to a great new stadium, we will possibly have 4,500 housing units near the rail line and a reinvigorated community around Halawa.”

The finalist teams are both mixes of local and national entities. They are called Aloha Halawa District Partners and Waiola Development Partners.

The Aloha Halawa group includes Development Ventures Group, Inc.; Stanford Carr Development, LLC; Ameresco, Inc.; and Aloha Stadium Community Development, LLC (The Cordish Company) as lead equity members. RMA Architects, Inc.; Populous; SB Architects; Henning Larsen; Alakea Design Group, LLC; and WCIT Architects are the design team, and Hawaiian Dredging Construction Co., Inc. and AECOM Hunt are the construction team. Castle &Cooke Hawaii and Wilson Okamoto Corp. are other team members.

The Waiola group includes EllisDon Capital, Inc.; BSC Acquisitions II, LLC; and Kobayashi Group, LLC as the lead equity members. Design Partners Incorporated, Manica Architecture, PA and Stantec Architecture, Inc. are the design team and Nan, Inc. is the construction team. Machete Group; ES CON Sports &Entertainment; Biederman Redevelopment Ventures; SSFM International, Inc.; Rider Levett Bucknall, Ltd.; Shade Group, LLC; and PBR Hawaii &Associates, Inc. are other team members.

A state evaluation committee chose the finalists based on a point system that included project understanding, team structure and governance, and experience and capability.

“We were very pleased with the response to the qualifications phase of the RFP,” Aloha Stadium Authority chair Brennon Morioka said. “The level of interest by potential bidders demonstrated the attractiveness of NASED. And the quality of the priority-listed offerors gives us confidence that the NASED project will result in not just a new stadium but a revitalized community we can all be proud of.”

The exact number of applicants and their scores were asked for, but not provided.

“We did receive more than two responses,” said Gordon Wood of the state Department of Accounting and General Services.

A state House bill to move the new stadium project to the University of Hawaii campus died in the state Senate shortly after it crossed over March 7.

“I’m doing whatever I can so it doesn’t get sidetracked by some people with numbskull ideas,” said state Sen. Glenn Wakai, who represents the areas surrounding the stadium.

The strategic plan to replace the original Aloha Stadium was changed by former Gov. David Ige near the end of his second term in late 2022, and then at the start of Green’s administration early last year. This forced a second market-sounding process for prospective groups to develop, build, operate and maintain the stadium and the rest of NASED.

Some of the entities in the two groups were also finalists the first time around, when separate groups would have been contracted to build the stadium and the surrounding district.

Officials and planners were in agreement Thursday that the process now in play won’t cost taxpayers more than the state bonds allocated by the Legislature in 2022. In this public-private partnership model, the winning team takes on future financial risk in exchange for the opportunity to profit from NASED real estate development.