For Immediate News Release: January 31, 2022

PRESERVING THE PAST TO PROTECT THE FUTURE: THE 2022-2027 STATEWIDE HISTORIC PRESERVATION PLAN

(Kapolei) – The State Historic Preservation Division (SHPD) is announcing the second in a series of public meetings for the Statewide Historic Preservation Plan.  

The five-year strategic plan is intended to help create goals for historic preservation in the state and inform the activities of the SHPD. Completion of this plan is required for Hawaiʻi to remain eligible to receive federal funds from the National Park Service. The plan’s purpose is to bring together historic preservation professionals and interested community members to craft ways to better manage historic properties in our state. The plan assesses historic preservation needs, priorities, goals, challenges, and opportunities and will highlight recommendations for future management of historic properties in Hawaiʻi.  

Historic properties include, but are not limited to:  

• Historic buildings 
• Archaeological sites  
• Burials  
• Aviation artifacts  
• Cultural landscapes 
• Historic districts such as Chinatown 
• Loʻi  
• Fishponds  
• Heiau 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. 

The second meeting is scheduled for 5:30-8:30 PM, Tuesday, February 8th. The link to the meeting will be available on the SHPD website.

If you would like to provide public testimony, please RSVP via the SHPD Preservation Plan email address by 5:30 PM on February 7th. Public testimony will be limited to three minutes. You are encouraged to submit written testimony to the address provided above.  While SHPD staff will be unable to answer questions during this meeting, if you write to SHPD with questions ahead of time then they will do their best to get back to you. If you do not wish to testify and simply wish to listen, you do not need to RSVP.

The third public meeting will be held in early March (date and time TBD). You may write to the Preservation Plan email address and you will be notified of any upcoming meetings.  

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Attend the meeting: 

https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/shpd 

 RSVP for public testimony (SHPD Preservation Plan email address):  [email protected]

Media contact:

AJ McWhorter Communications Specialist Hawai’i Department of Land and Natural Resources [email protected] 808-587-0396 (Communications Office)