State officials are confident about the new timeline for the opening of the new Aloha Stadium project — they’ve penciled in the first game of the 2028 University of Hawaii football season as a possible inaugural event.

That resolve is nice to hear, but taxpayers have heard these pledges before. They also know the state’s dubious record of seeing through public works on time and on budget. Messes from the languishing state Capitol’s leaking reflecting pools to the maintenance problems of the Hawaii Convention Center make it hard to adopt anything but a skeptical outlook on this timetable.

The stadium in particular has been in tumult for years, bouncing between development concepts for a large, mixed-use complex. The current administration has settled on a plan for a single master developer who will design, build, operate and maintain everything.

This seems rational, at least in theory: A developer will need the incentive of profits downstream from the stadium, which itself is not likely to be a big moneymaker.

In practice, though, there likely will be many potholes in the long road to the new stadium, and it will take vigilance to keep the whole enterprise on track for the 2028 deadline.

Gov. Josh Green convened a news conference on Thursday to release the request for proposals (RFP) for the long-promised New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District. NASED is a development zone encompassing some 98 acres of state-owned land in Halawa, including the 25-acre site of the existing stadium and its replacement.

But Green is also committing to making affordable housing part of the remaining 73 acres, as well as restaurants, shops and other attractions. This is a major opportunity to pare down the state’s mammoth deficit in housing capacity — units are in short supply across all income levels. It’s the lack of workforce housing, though, that is most pervasive.

So it’s disappointing that the goal in the RFP is to increase inventory only modestly, on the order of 4,500 units, 70% reserved for workforce households and 20% for those earning below that range. Officials need to ensure that this does not get whittled further, and to look for opportunities during the planning process to expand on it.

The centerpiece stadium will come first — as it should. Honolulu needs a multipurpose venue such as the 25,000-seat facility now envisioned.

The Legislature appropriated $400 million in 2022, now seen as insufficient to get even this smaller stadium built. Developers would need to raise revenue elsewhere in the project to fill the financing gaps.

What developers may bring to the table will be clarified next summer, when proposals are due. There is some hope — at least three teams have expressed serious interest, said Brennan Morioka, who chairs the Stadium Authority.

However, in August NASED officials released a “market sounding” report that noted some nervousness from potential developers about the risk inherent in this procurement model.

Assuming a suitable private partner steps forward, another challenge looms: seeing that the final contract, to be signed in the summer of 2025, incorporates safeguards for the public interest. These would include benchmarks and provisions for maintenance of the public facility.

After all, it was shoddy maintenance practice that got the old stadium, built in 1975, in trouble — not to mention the folly of accepting the assurances that its “protective” oxidation layer would, in fact, protect. Instead the rusty “patina” just continued to rust away.

Now the state is duty-bound to make the most of this property, as an economic driver that also will yield critically needed housing. This is its one chance to get it right.