Gone. No Feasibility Study. No Conceptual Land Use Plan. No Master Plan. The words are still there, but if you click for details on the “Imagine Blaisdell” home page, you are informed that “Oops! That page can’t be found.” Just like that, the massive overhaul of the Blaisdell block has vanished. Post-mortem editorials and articles on the now-defunct project mentioned that timing, cost, and HART headaches were simply too much to overcome in 2020. And no one saw that coming down the line 24-months ago?
Perhaps it was a fool’s folly to think that there would be sufficient economic incentives for this public-private partnership… for $773 million? Other than a possible small hotel venture and a few, on-site concessionaires, there was no major retail nor housing planned on the site. So how, exactly, would private entrepreneurs have made their money back? We’ll never know; well, at least for now.
The prospectus included plans to retain the iconic spaceship motif on a rebuilt Blaisdell Arena, but added just 2,200 more seats (raising capacity from 6,800 to 9,000), which would not have provided the necessary number of seats needed to lure major concert tours that skip Honolulu annually due to our lack of a right-sized, regularly-available, indoor venue that includes adequate staging and lighting.
Most mainland concert venues include seating for 12,000-18,000 guests. Were promotion stakeholders like AEG, Live Nation, pro sports leagues and others contacted when just 9,000 seats were suggested in the defunct design? You simply cannot justify “reasonable” ticket prices here with only 9,000 seats, and the alternative is to pay acts to perform on two nights (with doubled performance costs, venue rent, personnel costs, etc.). And that’s obviously a major deterrent- witness just how few major concerts we currently see.
So the bold initiative to re-do the Blaisdell complex is now on the back burner, $16-million later, and that burner isn’t even lukewarm, considering that the completion of the City’s rail project (and revived Blaisdell funding consideration) is at least six years away. By the time the Blaisdell Center Master Plan gets revisited, the arena will be more than 60 years old (2024). Surely, an overhaul and/or modernization of some kind is needed. But with on-going and on-growing concerns about approved financing, interested investors, and this train pain, a new Blaisdell Arena is one spaceship that won’t be getting off the launch pad any time soon.
Think about it…
I say demo the entire area and make it Blaisdell Park. Build a new venue within the proposed Aloha Stadium re-do. Continue the name of the facility as Blaisedell Center.