HILO, Hawai‘i — The 28th KWXX Ho‘olaule‘a might not happen this year, but it will eventually return to downtown Hilo now that a conflict with Hawai‘i County has been resolved.
The annual music festival would have been held in January if it had kept to its regular schedule, but in October 2023, the festival’s organizers announced the event was cancelled after they were unable to get permits to close roads downtown.
At the time, Chris Leonard — president of New West Broadcasting Corp. and Ho‘olaule‘a organizer — said the Hawai‘i Police Department had raised safety concerns about the popular festival, which typically draws thousands of attendees. But Leonard also was confident in 2023 that he would find a way to assuage the police department’s concerns and allow the event to take place on another date.
While Leonard still isn’t sure when that date will be, he told the Tribune-Herald on Friday that the festival will return to downtown Hilo the same as it has for decades.
“Unfortunately, it’s still a work in progress,” Leonard said. “We’re still lining up vendors and supplies and … trying to find a date where it all works for everyone.”
Leonard said he isn’t sure whether the new date will be in 2024 at all, or if the festival will just have to skip this year and return in January 2025.
“I think if we hold it this year and then do the next in January, that would be stretching the system a bit,” Leonard said. “So, another consideration is picking a date we can do year after year.”
Last year, Leonard said HPD’s main concerns were regarding staffing shortages at the department, which would make enforcing security at such a large event untenable. While he didn’t go into specifics, he said those concerns have been addressed without changing the nature of the event, and that HPD, the Hawai‘i Fire Department and the mayor’s office are all on board.
“When event organizers initially submitted their paperwork with HPD for the 2024 Ho‘olaule‘a, the officers in charge had some safety concerns that needed to be rectified within the plan before the event could move forward,” said Cyrus Johnasen, spokesman for Mayor Mitch Roth, in a statement. “Due to a short runway, organizers chose to push back the planned date to ensure adequate measures could be taken to satisfy our joint commitments to health and safety.
“Since then, concerns have been more than addressed, and organizers have been working closely with our Parks department to identify potential future dates.”
After the cancellation, Leonard had also said the event might be moved to different locations, such as the Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium or the Hilo Dragstrip, although neither location would be ideal for an event of Ho‘olaule‘a’s scope. But on Friday, Leonard said “the plan is to keep it in the same area.”
Leonard said he is “very thankful” to the county for working with him to keep the event alive, and Johnasen’s statement thanked Leonard and other event organizers for “their shared commitment to safety.”
Since the first Ho‘olaule‘a in 1993, the festival has missed only four years, Leonard said: once in 1996 and three more times during the COVID-19 pandemic.
