New Aloha Stadium priority-listed offerors

Image: Crawford Architects

On March 28^th, the New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District (NASED) announced that it has selected two (2) priority-listed offerors that will be considered to develop and operate the new Aloha Stadium (Hālawa, Hawai’i, US) and the surrounding entertainment district as one integrated public-private partnership (P3) project.

‘wtpartnership.co’ stated that the selection and notification of the priority-listed offerors has occurred earlier than scheduled, marking the end of the qualifications phase and commencement of the proposals phase, and keeping the new Aloha Stadium on track to open for the 2028 University of Hawai’i football season.

The New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District (NASED) is a public-private partnership (P3) project that will be the centerpiece of a mixed-use development on the 98-acre Aloha Stadium site in Hālawa, Hawai’i (US). The NASED will include roughly 4,500 housing units, thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in tax revenue for the US State of Hawai’i and Honolulu county. The new venue will also attract world-class sporting and entertainment events.

The New Aloha Stadium is a proposed 35,000-seat multipurpose stadium to be built in Hālawa, Hawai’i (US) for the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors football program, with the demolition of the old stadium to begin in 2025. The area around the stadium will also include entertainment venues, retail stores, restaurants, housing, hotels, recreational sites, cultural amenities, and green space. It will replace and will be constructed on the site of the current Aloha Stadium.

The Hawaii Rainbow Warriors football team represents the University of Hawaiʻi (a public land-grant research university) in Mānoa (US) in the National Collegiate of Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) college football.

Indianapolis (US)-based the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student-athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States and one in Canada. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and helps over 500,000 college student-athletes who compete annually in college sports.

The NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A, is the highest level of college football in the United States. The FBS consists of the largest schools in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). As of the 2024 season, there are 10 Conferences and 134 schools in the FBS.

The 50,000-capacity Aloha Stadium is a closed multipurpose stadium located in Hālawa, Hawai’i (US), a Census-designated place that is a Western suburb of Honolulu. It is the largest stadium in the State of Hawai’i.

A public-private partnership (P3) is a contractual agreement between a Government agency and a private partner to construct, maintain, or manage a public service facility or system. The P3 allows the public agencies to access private equity capital to finance projects, which can help speed up the delivery of vital projects.

‘wtpartnership.co’ quoted Josh Green, M.D., the Governor of Hawai’i, as stating, “That this is moving forward ahead of schedule speaks highly of the State employees and the private sector partners working to bring this project to fruition. In addition to a great new stadium, we will possibly have 4,500 housing units near the rail line and a reinvigorated community around Hālawa.”

Added Brennon Morioka, Chair, Aloha Stadium Authority Board (a Department of the State of Hawaii’s Department of Accounting and General Services), “We were very pleased with the response to the qualifications phase of the request for proposal (RFP). The level of interest by the potential bidders demonstrated the attractiveness of NASED. And the quality of the priority-listed offerors gives us confidence that the NASED project will result in not just a new stadium but a revitalized community we can all be proud of.”

A request for proposal (RFP) is a document that solicits a proposal, often made through a bidding process, by an agency or company interested in procurement of a commodity, service, or valuable asset, to the potential suppliers to submit business proposals.
 

The developer-led teams that were priority-listed include:

The Aloha Halawa District Partners (AHDP), a consortium comprising:

• The Development Ventures Group, Inc., (DEVEN – a real estate firm that focuses on acquiring, managing, developing, and repositioning the real estate assets based in Orlando, Florida), the Stanford Carr Development, LLC, (a real estate development company in Hawai’i that offers construction and management services), the Ameresco, Inc., (a renewable energy company that provides energy efficiency and renewable energy solutions to its clients in North America and Europe and is based in Framingham, Massachusetts), and the Aloha Stadium Community Development, LLC (The Cordish Company – a US-based real estate development and entertainment operating company with headquarters in Baltimore) as the Lead Equity Members;
• The RMA Architects (an architectural practice with studios in Mumbai [India] and Boston [US]), Populous (a global architectural and design practice based in Kansas City, Missouri), the SB Architects (a global architecture and design firm that specializes in hospitality, residential and mixed-use developments and is based in San Francisco, California), Henning Larsen (an international architecture firm that also specializes in landscape, urbanism, interior, graphic, and lighting design and is based in Copenhagen, Denmark), the Alakea Design Group (an architectural firm in Honolulu, Hawai’i that offers design, planning and project management services), and the WCIT Architecture (an award-winning design firm in Honolulu, Hawai’i that specializes in design and development for the luxury resorts, commercial, educational, healthcare, and community-based projects) as the design team;
• The Hawaiian Dredging Construction Company, Inc. (a general contractor in Hawai’i that specializes in general construction management) and the AECOM Hunt (a construction company that offers services like construction management, design-build, estimating, and consulting and is based in Indianapolis, Indiana) as the construction team; and
• The Castle & Cooke Hawaii (a real estate agency that owns, manages and develops residential, commercial and mixed-use properties in Hawai’i and is based in Honolulu) and the Wilson Okamoto Corporation (a privately-held, multidisciplinary engineering and planning firm in Honolulu, Hawai’i) as the other team members.

 
The Waiola Development Partners (WDP), a consortium comprising:

• The EllisDon Capital, Inc., (the investment and development arm of EllisDon, a global construction services company that is employee-owned and is based in Mississauga, Canada), the BSC Acquisitions II, LLC, (a company in Honolulu, Hawai’i) and the Kobayashi Group, LLC (a family-owned and -managed real estate investment and development firm that focuses on Hawai’i and is based in Honolulu) as the lead equity members;
• The Design Partners Incorporated (DPI – an architecture firm in Honolulu, Hawai’i that specializes in design, engineering, project management, coordination, building information modeling (BIM), and model making services), the MANICA Architecture (a Kansas City, Kansas-based architecture firm), PA, and the Stantec Architecture, Inc. (a global professional services company that provides consulting services in architecture, engineering and other areas and is based in Edmonton, Canada) as the design team;
• Nan, Inc. (a construction company in Honolulu, Hawai’i that offers general contracting, preconstruction and design-build services) as the construction team; and
• The Machete Group (an advisory firm that provides strategic, development and operational services to the industry clients in sports, entertainment and real estate development and is based in Houston, Texas), the ES CON Sports & Entertainment (Fighters Sports & Entertainment Company Limited – a joint venture that builds the professional baseball stadiums and develops the surrounding communities and is based in Hokkaido, Japan), the Biederman Redevelopment Ventures (BRV – a private consulting firm that creates, redevelops and operates public spaces, neighborhood streetscapes and parks in mixed-use developments, and is based in New York), the SSFM International, Inc., (a professional engineering, planning and consulting firm based in Honolulu, Hawai’i that offers project management, construction management and civil engineering services), the Rider Levett Bucknall Limited (RLB – a global construction, property and management consultancy that provides advice and management throughout the built environment and is based in London, UK), the SHADE Group, LLC (an architectural design company based in Honolulu, Hawai’i), and the PBR Hawaii & Associates, Inc. (a privately-held company that provides professional services to the developers, landowners and the Government agencies in Hawai’i and is based in Honolulu) as the other team members.

 
The selection of the priority-listed offerors follows the strong response the NASED received after it issued its request for proposals (RFPs) in December 2023. The response deadline for this qualifications phase concluded on February 14th, and the responses were subsequently scored by a specialist evaluation committee selected by the State for the NASED project. This committee is composed of a mix of State employees and subject-matter experts from the development industry.
 

The responses were assessed against the following criteria:

• The Administrative Response (‘acceptable’, ‘potentially acceptable’, or ‘unacceptable’);
• Technical Response:
  • Project Understanding (20 points);
  • Team Structure and Governance (20 points);
  • Experience and Capability (30 points); and
  • Financial Capacity (30 points).

 
The NASED project will now move into the proposals phase, open only to the priority-listed offerors, with the objective of concluding this phase with one preferred offeror. The deadline for the proposals will be in Summer 2024, with the selection of a preferred offeror targeted for Fall 2024, and the final execution of an agreement targeted for Summer 2025.

The WT Partnership is one of the fastest growing advisory firms in North America. Founded in Australia back in 1949, the WT is known as the oldest startup in the industry and has been a force in North America since 2010. A trusted advisor to the Owners, Developers, Government and Private sector clients, the WT currently manages billions of dollars of active mega projects across North America.

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