State soliciting public input for Hawaiʻi Historic Preservation Plan

The Hawaiʻi State Historic Preservation Division is hosting its second virtual public meeting about the Statewide Historic Preservation Plan on Feb. 8. 

The five-year strategic plan is creating goals for historic preservation in the state and providing information about the activities of the State Historic Preservation Division.

Hawaiʻi is required to complete this 2022-2027 plan to remain eligible to receive federal funds from the National Park Service. To review the 2012-2017 plan, click here.

The plan brings together historic preservation professionals and interested community members to craft ways to better manage historic properties in Hawaiʻi. The plan assesses historic preservation needs, priorities, goals, challenges and opportunities. It will highlight recommendations for future management of historic properties in Hawaiʻi.  

Historic properties include:  

• Historic buildings 
• Archaeological sites  
• Burials  
• Aviation artifacts  
• Cultural landscapes 
• Historic districts such as Chinatown 
• Loʻi  
• Fishponds  
• Heiau (places of worship) and traditional cultural properties

Community input is essential to effective historic preservation planning and this plan will be informed by the overall comments from these meetings. All comments related to historic preservation are welcome during these meetings. The comments from these initial first two scoping meetings will be used to help develop future-focused and topical public meetings, according to a Department of Land and Natural Resources’ news release.

The Feb. 8 meeting will run from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. The link to the meeting and the link to RSVP to provide public testimony are available on the State Historic Preservation Division website. If you do not wish to testify and simply want to listen, you do not need to RSVP.

Public testimony will be limited to three minutes. The public also can submit written testimony to dlnr.hp.preservationplan@hawaii.gov.

While the division’s staff will be unable to answer questions during this meeting, if you write to the division with questions ahead of time, staff members will do their best to get back to you. 

The third public meeting will be held in early March at a date to be determined. You can write to the Preservation Plan email address to be notified of upcoming meetings.