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Public comments sought for Blaisdell Center face-lift

STAR-ADVERTISER

Blaisdell Center Concert Hall.

City officials are inviting the public to a third and final workshop next week for commenting on a plan to improve Blaisdell Center by renovating some parts and redeveloping other parts of the 53-year-old complex.

The city has been working on the makeover since 2014, when a panel of consultants presented ideas for the 22-acre site along Ward Avenue in Honolulu. Since then the city has produced an economic feasibility study and crafted a conceptual master plan that has gone through revisions.

Under the plan’s latest version, the concert hall and arena would be renovated, and the exhibition hall would be replaced. More parking, enhanced fishponds and water features, a sports pavilion, performance hall, halau and arts ensemble, war memorial, restaurants, cafes and bars are also part of the initiative, which the city roughly estimates would cost $400 million to $500 million financed primarily through city bonds.

The meeting is 6 p.m. Wednesday at Blaisdell. Parking will be free.

If work proceeds as expected, the next major steps would be to produce an environmental assessment and project design next year.

More information is at imagine­blaisdell.com Opens in a new tab.

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