Whenever timetables are proclaimed for government projects, target dates often aren’t met. So it’s not so surprising that the New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District (NASED) failed to meet its own heralded Dec. 15 deadline, to get request for proposal (RFP) specs out to three developer groups bidding to build a new stadium at Halawa.
But given that the state agency running the NASED project had announced the RFP date with considerable fanfare last month, this setback was jarring.
“The issuance of the NASED Stadium Project RFP will mark another progressive milestone for the creation of a vibrant live-work-play-thrive district with a multi-use stadium serving as the centerpiece,” Chris Kinimaka, public works administrator for the Department of Accounting and General Services (DAGS), said in mid-November.
DAGS this week attributed the deferred deadline, now reset to “early 2022,” to a pending administrative review and ongoing preparations for next month’s start of the 2022 Legislature.
Ostensibly, the stadium was to be the beacon for redevelopment of the 98-acre Halawa site. That initial vision was welcome: a masterplanned live-work-play community built around a stadium to replace the deteriorated Aloha Stadium — all on state land, on the city’s rail line. But the vision soon got blurred. Back-and-forth uncertainty about Aloha Stadium’s fate ended abruptly with its permanent shutdown – to the surprise and dismay of the University of Hawaii, then forced to scramble to build a temporary football venue on its Manoa campus. The Legislature allotted some $400 million for the NASED project, which was later reduced. That, combined with economic factors, led to a curious bifurcation of NASED into two phases: one for the “stadium project” on 25 acres; the other for a nonstadium “real estate project” on 73 acres.
But when the RFP for the nonstadium phase came out first, on Oct. 12, it drew skepticism about the entire district’s goals and future costs. It didn’t help that affordable housing seemed to be diminishing as a priority, with state specs containing vague requirements for housing. The new set-up became more questionable when the state couldn’t offer any estimated timetable for a new stadium.
Then two weeks later, three former Hawaii governors made a public splash by proposing that NASED be scrapped altogether, and that the entire 98-acre Halawa site be used for “desperately needed” workforce and affordable housing with complementary commercial/retail elements. That led to a NASED/DAGS news conference three weeks later, announcing that “the much-anticipated” stadium project RFP would be issued by Dec. 15.
That’s now on hold. Whether this entire project will emerge in the public’s best interests remains murky. Financial development deals that are exceedingly convoluted — perhaps unnecessarily so — will surely make taxpayers’ funds that much harder to track.
