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How Downtown Hilo's Visioning Process Began EnVision Downtown Hilo 2025 is the name of a grassroots community visioning project that began on March 22, 2004, with the first in what was to be a series of community workshops. On that day in March, however, workshop organizers and participants were unaware that they were the seed of an organic process that would eventually grow into a community-wide, even island-wide, effort. This modest, hastily arranged one-day workshop was the catalyst that pulled the public into action. How It All Started: Workshop #1 Smart Growth: An evolving group The first community workshop featured Cherie Enns, a Smart of ideas about how to better Growth lecturer and professor of geography at University College manage urban growth and of the Fraser Valley, British Columbia, Canada. Cherie felt a development. Smart growth natural affinity for Downtown Hilo and made annual trips with her principles include housing and students. Prior to her visit in the spring of 2004, Cherie contacted transportation choices, compact, both the Hilo Downtown Improvement Association (DIA) and the walkable communities, strong sense County of Hawaii Planning Department (Planning Department) and of place and preserving open generously offered to conduct a workshop on Smart Growth. Spaces. Coincidentally, the DIA had recently enlisted Susan Gagorik as a Planning Department liaison to its Board of Directors. Susan and DIA's Executive Director Mary Ann Wanush brainstormed and then sold their idea of a town hall style of meeting, which would be co-sponsored by the DIA and Planning Department. Two sessions were scheduled for Monday, March 22, 2004, at historic Central Christian Church on Haili Street in Downtown Hilo. Cherie began each session with a Smart Growth presentation. The second part of each session was devoted to small group mapping exercises using poster-sized maps of the Downtown Hilo CDH. Each group placed stickers on the map which indicated the places and features they thought were "great," "not so great," and then they added their "dreams" for Downtown. Both audiences that day participated enthusiastically and the organizers found that people were reluctant to leave at the P. close of each workshop. A simple mapping exercise had opened up discussion about possibilities and sparked an interest that was impossible to ignore. On that rainy Monday, sixty people took time from their busy schedules to share their thoughts and dreams for Downtown Hilo, and they wanted to know what was next and what they could do to help. Workshop organizers were energized by this positive response and decided that the Site of workshop# —March 22, 2004 time was right for someone to take responsibility for keeping the 9