New Aloha Stadium
| Capacity | 35,000 |
|---|---|
| Opening | 2026 |
| Team | Hawaii Rainbow Warriors |
| City | Honolulu |
| Country | United States |
The problems with the old Aloha Stadium started to show way back in 2005 when the stadium’s structure started to give. The biggest issue with the old Aloha Stadium was the rusting caused by Honlulu’s ocean-salt climate. They initially used steel when building the stadium in order to avoid the need for painting, and it backfired. The steel wouldn’t stop rusting which put the entire stadium at risk with the need for more room to hold more patrons, and hundreds of seats needing to be repaired. A Honolulu engineering firm calculated that it would cost the state up to 215 million dollars to repair the damage to the stadium, but even then they would only be preserving it for a few more years. In 2007 the state proposed the idea of using 300 million dollars to build a whole new stadium instead of using 215 million to save a dying stadium. The old Aloha Stadium needed immediate repairs at this point, or would soon have to be demolished. The state used 12.4 million dollars in May 2007 to remove the rust and corrosion on the old stadium.
Over the next couple of years the state would continue pouring money into the old Aloha Stadium to keep it standing, but eventually the state would come to the decision that the stadium was more of a liability than an investment. In early 2017 a study came out presenting the idea of building a new stadium which would be smaller than the current one. The stadium would only have 30,000 seats and be built on existing property, along with some commercial development surrounding it. In July 2019 the governor of Hawaii approved a new stadium project. The state will be putting up 350 million dollars to build the new Aloha Stadium, and it will be located in Halawa, Honolulu. It won’t just be a stadium but also an entertainment district that will include a hotel, railstation, mixed-up retail, an area for residential homes, and the 35,000 seat Aloha Stadium. Construction for the new Aloha Stadium is set to begin late this year, and the opening of the new stadium is sometime in 2026. The entertainment district is on a different schedule and will be completed somewhere between 2033-2038.
Photos: Crawford Architects
