When three former governors line up behind a common cause, you gotta pay attention. Especially if it’s a whopper.

John Waihee, Ben Cayetano and Neil Abercrombie, a trio of strong-minded ex-heads of this state, have come out against rebuilding Aloha Stadium in Halawa, instead favoring a Division I stadium on the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus. They maintain that the 98 acres in Halawa would be better used to meet a desperate need — affordable housing.

They minced no words. Opens in a new tab The plan to redevelop and replace the Halawa stadium “will be a financial sinkhole for Hawaii’s taxpayers and a walk-away disaster for any developer,” they wrote. The time it would take to build would be fatal to the UH football program as a Division I contender, they maintain.

Tuesday’s declaration seemed to have blindsided officials with UH and the New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District, a planned mix of housing and commercial development all surrounding a new stadium to be served by a rail transit station. The concept behind the district has been more than a decade in the making, and bids are being sought for developers who want in. The current round of bids are not for the stadium itself, though, and no time estimate has been placed on that part of the project.

The ex-governors noted that once the 46-year-old Aloha Stadium was declared unrepairable barely a year ago, UH managed to retrofit the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex in time to open a 9,000-seat on-campus stadium in time for football season. With that foundation, they say, a Manoa facility seating 22,000 to 27,000 could be built much more efficiently than a new one in Halawa.

Funding could come from the $350 million already approved by the Legislature for a new stadium, and the ex-govs say it probably wouldn’t even take that much.

Of course this plan has dozens of tentacles — finding enough space to expand a UH stadium, parking (that’s a big one), how to accommodate non-football uses, such as arena-level concerts, to name but a few. But it is worth serious consideration, and not just for the marquee names behind the proposal.

The Halawa land, given its proximity to town and the airport, existing infrastructure and the coming of rail, offers a golden opportunity to provide badly needed housing for Hawaii’s people, with the commercial development to enhance it. It may not need a stadium as anchor tenant.