Univ. of Hawaii officials on Thursday said that the school "would be 'comfortable' with a new 30,000- to 35,000-seat stadium on the current Aloha Stadium footprint but wants greater opportunities to share in the revenue," according to Ferd Lewis of the HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER. A day after the Aloha Stadium Authority "accepted a consultant’s report that conceptualized a facility to replace the 42-year-old, 50,000-seat stadium, members of the UH Board Of Regents Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics questioned school administrators about the issue." UH is one of two schools in the 12-member Mountain West Conference that "do not own or operate their own football stadiums." UH can "resell some parking spots and sells field-level advertising but does not share in most parking and advertising revenue and does not profit from concessions." UH does "not pay rent at Aloha Stadium but does pay approximately $90,000-$100,000 per game for operations, including clean-up, security and electricity" (HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER, 4/7). In Honolulu, Dave Reardon writes under the header, "Replace Aging Aloha Stadium Before Someone Gets Hurt." Construction, which would probably take about two years, "is the easy part." Traffic is "going to be bad anywhere there’s a stadium on the day of a big event." It has been "terrible in recent years for the Pro Bowl and its nearly 50,000 attendees." Reardon: "If a new stadium is smaller, that partially solves that problem" (HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER, 4/7).
