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EnVision Downtown Hilo 2025

EnVision Downtown Hilo 2025, ‘Ike iā Hilo, is the result of a grassroots visioning process that inspired a community. Originally guided by the Friends of Downtown Hilo Steering Committee, community members in Hilo came together in 2004 to develop shared community core values and an implementation matrix that would make their vision a reality. The resulting plan, titled EnVision Downtown Hilo 2025: A Community-Based Vision and Living Action Plan (EDH 2025), was adopted by Hawai‘i County Council Resolution 192-05 in November 2005 with the subsequent adoption of the five-year action plan update in November 2010.

Today, the EDH 2025 Plan continues to serve as a guide for planning in Downtown Hilo (see map). EDH 2025 contains a long-range Overarching Vision which is achieved via the implementation of multiple strategies and actions within the Six Vision Focus Areas:

  • Creating Economic Vitality
  • Preserving Our Environment
  • Strengthening and Sustaining Our Community
  • Enhancing Education, Culture, and the Arts
  • Promoting Health and Safety
  • Managing Growth

Following the initial adoption of the Plan, in January 2006 the Friends of Downtown Hilo introduced a successor implementation committee called the EDH 2025 VisionKeepers. Since then, the VisionKeepers have worked tirelessly to ensure that the Plan does not simply ‘sit on the shelf’ and that key government agencies and community organizations embrace the Overarching Vision and implement its strategies. Support from the County of Hawai‘i Planning Department has been crucial in working with the VisionKeepers to ‘shepherd’ the implementation process. As a pilot non-government implementation committee for the Island of Hawai‘i, the VisionKeepers documented and shared their challenges, highlights, and lessons learned in a publication titled, The VisionKeepers’ Guide to Implementing Your Community Plan.