Aloha Stadium

Aloha Stadium is a stadium located in the Halawa CDP, City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii, United States. Currently Aloha Stadium is home to the University of Hawaii Warriors football team (Western Athletic Conference, NCAA Division I FBS). It hosts the NCAA's Hawai'i Bowl, and has also been home to the National Football League's Pro Bowl since 1980 (except in 2010) and the NCAA's Hula Bowl from 1975 to 1997 and again in 2006. It also hosts numerous high school football games during the season, and serves as a venue for large concerts and events. A swap meet in the stadium's parking lot every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday draws large crowds. Aloha Stadium once served as home field for the AAA Hawaii Islanders of the Pacific Coast League from 1975 to 1987 before the team moved to Colorado Springs.

History
Located west of downtown Honolulu and two miles north of Honolulu International Airport, Aloha Stadium was built in 1975 at a cost of $37 million. It was intended as a replacement for the aging Honolulu Stadium on King Street, demolished in 1976.

The first sporting event ever held at Aloha Stadium was a football game played between the University of Hawaii and Texas A&I (now Texas A&M-Kingsville) on September 13, 1975. The crowd was 32,247.

Aloha Stadium could be reconfigured into various configurations for different sport venues and other purposes, and was the first stadium in the United States with this capability. Four movable sections, each 3.5 million pounds and with a capacity of 7,000, could move using air casters into a diamond configuration for baseball (also used for soccer), an oval for football, or a triangle for concerts. A 2005 study by Honolulu engineering firm Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. determined that the stadium required $99 million to be completely restored and an additional $115 million for ongoing maintenance and refurbishment over the next 20 years to extend its useful life. In January 2007, the stadium was permanently locked into its football configuration, citing cost and maintenance issues.

There have been numerous discussions with State of Hawaii lawmakers who are concerned with the physical condition of the stadium. There are several issues regarding rusting of the facility, several hundred seats that need to be replaced, and restroom facilities that need to be expanded to accommodate more patrons.

In early 2007, the state legislature proposed to spend $300 million to build a new facility as opposed to spending approximately $216 million to extend the life of Aloha Stadium for another 20–30 years. The new stadium would also be used to lure a potential Super Bowl to Hawaii in the near future, possibly for 2016.

One council member has said that if immediate repairs are not made within the next seven years, then the stadium will probably have to be demolished due to safety concerns. In May 2007, the state alloted $12.4 million to be used towards removing corrosion and rust from the structure.

Expansion and improvements
In 2003, the stadium surface was changed from AstroTurf (which had been in place since the stadium opened) to FieldTurf. up until 2011.

In July of 2011 the field was upgraded to UBU Sports Speed S5-M synthetic turf system that features the exclusive Removable Active Panel system as part of the multimillion dollar renovation to Aloha Stadium. The synthetic turf system covers 110,000 sq ft and has 22 Removable Active Panel's located in 7 locations. The RAP's have inlaid logos for the University of Hawaii and Aloha Bowl as well as blank panels to accommodate the NFL Pro Bowl and NCAA Bowl Games that will be custom painted for each event.

In 2008, the state of Hawaii approved the bill of $185 million to refurbish the aging Aloha Stadium. In 2010, Aloha Stadium completely retrofitted its scoreboard and video screen to be more up to date with its high definition capability. The Aloha Stadium Authority plans to add more luxury suites, replacing all seats, rusting treatments, parking lots, more restrooms, pedestrian bridge supports, enclosed lounge, and more. There is also a proposal that would close the 4 opening corners of the stadium to add more seats.

In 2011, the playing field was refurbished in part due to a naming rights sponsorship from Hawaiian Airlines. As a result of the sponsorship deal, the field is now referred to as Hawaiian Airlines Field at Aloha Stadium.

Events
In 1997, a three-game regular season series between Major League Baseball's St. Louis Cardinals and San Diego Padres was held at the stadium. The series was played in with a doubleheader on April 19 and a nationally broadcast (ESPN) game on April 20. In 1975, the Padres had played an exhibition series against the Seibu Lions of Japan's Pacific League.


 * The Police in their final US concert on their Synchronicity Tour on February 25, 1984.
 * Michael Jackson's HIStory World Tour on January 3–4, 1997 - his only US shows that decade. He was the first person to sell out Aloha Stadium.
 * Whitney Houston ended her Pacific Rim Tour with a sold-out concert on May 28, 1997.
 * The Rolling Stones during their Bridges To Babylon Tour on January 23–24, 1998.
 * Mariah Carey ended her Butterfly World Tour with a sold-out concert on February 21, 1998.
 * Celine Dion on her Let's Talk About Love Tour on February 12, 1999.
 * Janet Jackson's All for You Tour in 2002, which was broadcast on HBO as well as her 1999 Velvet Rope World Tour which broke stadium attendance records. The capacity for her 1999 show was expanded from the original capacity of 35,000 to 38,000 to meet the high ticket demand.
 * U2's final stop on their Vertigo Tour on December 9, 2006.

Aloha Stadium hosted the inaugural Pan-Pacific Championship (February 20–23, 2008), a knockout soccer tournament, involving four teams from Japan's J-League, North America's Major League Soccer (MLS) and Australia/New Zealand's A-League.

Aloha Stadium is also the venue for five public high school graduation ceremonies. Radford High School, Mililani High School, Aiea High School, James Campbell High School, and Pearl City High School hold their graduation ceremony at the stadium in early June.

Popular culture and fiction

 * Aloha Stadium is one of the settings of the movie Leroy and Stitch.
 * The 1980s television drama Magnum, P.I., shot on location in the Honolulu area, also made use of the stadium for shooting.
 * The ABC television drama Lost, shot on location on Oahu, used the stadium during a flashback episode for the character Jack.
 * The Aloha Stadium was featured in an episode of Hawaii Five-O entitled "Blood Money is Hard to Wash" (Season 9, 1977).