Developers have started demolishing parts of Aloha Stadium to make way for a new $650 million development. But now they have must tackle the challenge of relocating utilities.
Some 100 utility lines run under Aloha Stadium’s surface parking lot. It's a spaghetti tangle of lines that must be relocated for the massive development that's planned around the stadium.
Those utilities include a water supply line that feeds all of downtown Honolulu and a sewer line that connects to Pearl Harbor.
The whole stadium project spans 98 acres. When completed, it will have as many as 4,500 homes, 125,000 square feet of retail space and as many as 900 hotel rooms. And that's not counting planned park space, museums and a school.
Kaloa Robinson is a project manager at Stanford Carr Development, the company leading the Aloha Hālawa District Partners consortium. He said they're not just building a stadium, they're building a ZIP code. That means more capacity for the area, including at least one electrical substation, maybe two.
Robinson said it's going to take some creative thinking to pay for what will be a sizable investment.
One solution, he said, could be tax increment financing, or TIF. That works by freezing property tax assessments. So as the value rises, the additional taxes collected are placed into a fund to help pay for the infrastructure over the next several years.
Robinson said Hawaiʻi is one of only two states that doesn't use tax increment financing for public works.
But that could change. The Legislature is considering two bills that would allow the creation of a TIF fund. Both bills are headed for conference committee.
