Unsolicited Advice for the Neil S. Blaisdell Concert Hall

The Neal S. Blaisdell concert hall has 2,158 seats. Good luck finding yours, because you can’t read the seat numbers on any of them, they’re so faded and worn down. In fact, a lot about the concert hall falls short of the “luxurious comfort” promised by its website. The seat fabric looks worn and shabby, seatbacks are uniformly scuffed and grimy. On a recent visit, the floor in front of the concession was as sticky as a dive bar’s. It doesn’t look like anyone ever dusts the place.

The Blaisdell complex (concert hall, exhibition hall and arena) is run by the city’s Department of Enterprise Services, which also oversees the Honolulu Zoo and municipal golf courses. The department says the Blaisdell was renovated in 1994, but that was mainly to enclose the exhibition hall, and, if anyone is counting, that was nearly 20 years ago. Show a little more enterprise, DES, and make the concert hall live up to its potential.