Aloha Stadium plan heads for early approval

The state could accept a proposal for the New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District in Halawa as soon as mid-September, but demolition of the original Aloha Stadium won’t start until a contract is finalized nine months later.

Wednesday is the deadline to submit proposals to design, build, operate and maintain the stadium and develop the surrounding acreage, and a winner could be approved around two weeks ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline, officials said at Thursday’s monthly Stadium Authority meeting.

Early approval is possible or even probable because only one contender, Aloha Halawa District Partners, remains after the withdrawal of Waiola Development Partners in June.

“It looks more like five weeks instead of eight now because there is just one proposal to evaluate instead of two,” stadium manager and authority board member Ryan Andrews said.

A committee of public and private industry experts selected by the state comptroller will evaluate the proposal based on parameters outlined in the original request for proposals.

The Aloha Halawa group is a mix of local, national and international entities including Development Ventures Group Inc., Stanford Carr Development LLC, Ameresco Inc. and Aloha Stadium Community Development LLC (The Cordish Company) as lead equity members.

The group’s design team comprises RMA Architects Inc., Populous, SB Architects, Henning Larsen, Alakea Design Group LLC and WCIT Architects. Hawaiian Dredging Construction Co. Inc. and AECOM Hunt make up the construction team.

Castle &Cooke Hawaii and Wilson Okamoto Corp. are other team members.

Even if proposal approval is announced before the Sept. 30 deadline, only limited preparation work will be allowed before the state and contractors complete negotiations that have a deadline of June 30.

“They (won’t be) under contract yet,” Stadium Authority Chair Brennon Morioka said. “They can probably do some pre- engineering. If they need to go out and do some surveying or maybe some soil boring, they can go out and do that because that will help better inform them in putting their (revised or finalized) proposal together.”

The existing timeline calls for a 25,000-seat, expandable, multi-use stadium to be completed in time for the 2028 football season.

The original 50,000-seat Aloha Stadium, which opened in 1975, hosted University of Hawaii and high school football games before closing in 2021 because of safety concerns.

The New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District project is a public-private partnership in which the private contractors will receive $350 million earmarked for the stadium by the state Legislature. The private partners will agree to design and build, and operate and maintain the stadium for a 30-year period.

They also will receive the rights to develop the district’s 98 acres with homes, shops, restaurants and other real estate. It is expected the private partners might bring in other entities to do some of the development.

Under the arrangement, the private partners agree to handle all financing beyond the $350 million in state funding allotted for the stadium.

Since the private partners will also be responsible for operating and maintaining the facility, the state’s duties in managing it will change.

“Our management structure is designed to handle the day-to-day operations of the stadium,” Andrews wrote Thursday in an email. “Our role will shift from direct management to that of a landlord or asset manager. This new role will involve overseeing activities on the stadium land, managing the operations and maintenance contract (with the new stadium operator), and supervising long-term developments on the site. As a result, we will require some different skills and position titles.”

Andrews has started meeting with officials in other cities with combined sports venues and entertainment districts “to learn about their organizational structures,” and a subcommittee was formed at Thursday’s meeting to help address the issue.

Thursday also was the first monthly meeting for new Stadium Authority board members Walter Thoemmes and Andrew Pereira.