The record book tells us the first football game at Aloha Stadium was played on Sept. 13, 1975, with Texas A&I spoiling the University of Hawaii’s housewarming party 43-9. The Javelinas’ George Franklin was first to cross the goal line, with a 2-yard touchdown run.
But Joe Moore says that is incorrect. KHON’s living legend of a news anchor says he hit pay dirt first at Halawa — and this was about a decade after Moore starred at Aiea High School.
“I kid you not! But, it was before they’d put down the artificial turf and a bunch of sports media people were the first to play a football game there,” wrote Moore in an email Friday. “Granted it was a touch football game, but I caught a pass from Russ Francis and took it in for Aloha Stadium’s first TD.”
Moore, who was mostly a sportscaster in the early years of his broadcast career, also recalled doing radio play-by-play of UH’s first game at Aloha Stadium 50 years ago, that lopsided loss to the NAIA powerhouse.
Don Robbs — the retired voice of UH baseball and other sports for 50 years — was also a local broadcast news anchor and reporter in the 1970s when the ground was broken in Halawa.
“I was part of a small group who got to check out the site before they even put a shovel in the ground,” Robbs said in a phone interview Friday from his home in Pearl City. “I don’t remember that (media) game, but I remember Joe lived right around there. I also remember some of the neighbors saying ‘What is this? We don’t want a stadium in our neighborhood.’”
Several hundred families were displaced from Halawa Housing so the stadium could be built. Some held out for five years, according to published reports at the time.
Completed construction was first planned for 1973, and then changed to in time for the 1974 Hawaii Islanders baseball season. A late discovery of some soft soil, a sheet metal worker’s strike, temporary unavailability of a type of steel, and weather that wiped out more than 50 work days all contributed to delays.
The New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District — which includes a projected opening of its centerpiece, a reconstructed stadium, in 2028 — is a public-private partnership that also includes extensive development of 98 acres in Halawa around the stadium over the next 20 years.
The original Aloha Stadium had plenty of moving parts, too, literally. Before it was locked into football-only mode in 2007, the stands could be re-configured for baseball.
But the overall, big-picture concept in the 1970s was simple compared to the plan now. The state hired a contractor to build just a stadium in the ’70s. With the delays factored in, the cost for construction was $37 million — which translates to around $218 million in 2024 dollars.
At a surface glance, the old deal looks a lot better, since the state has allocated $350 million to the rebuild, and for a smaller capacity stadium.
But the contractors for the new stadium — not the state’s taxpayers via reluctant lawmakers — are responsible for financing operations and maintenance of the stadium. It’s part of the deal for the private contractors’ opportunity to plan and build the district (in partnership with the state).
Aloha Halawa Partners is the conglomerate that has until Thursday to submit its proposal to the state, which the state then has until September to accept.
Then there are nine months to work out details before the official contract is signed, leaving three years for out with the old, in with the new, and opening of Aloha Stadium II in time for the 2028 football season.
This concept and timeline — frequently re-set prior — was set shortly after Gov. Josh Green took office 20 months ago.
Hopefully, it accounts for enough unexpected delays like those when Aloha Stadium I was built. The Star-Bulletin’s sports editor in 1973, Jim Hackleman, wrote something then that remains true today:
“You can’t hold nature to a contract.”
