Waipahu High School seniors Lovelle Cutaran and Kayla Viernes designed half of a mural that will grace a former Aiea strip mall area plagued by graffiti.

"It was hard work, but it was really fun," said Viernes, 18, who worked with Cutaran to fold artwork ideas submitted by other students into their final design.

About 70 students began painting the mural onto the face of a 210-foot-long building at 98-080 Kamehameha Highway on Saturday.

The mural, expected to be finished Sunday, is a pilot project for a beautification program dubbed "Art with HART," organized by the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, which is overseeing the construction of Honolulu’s rail system.

HART spokeswoman Jeanne Mariani-Belding said the program aims to deter taggers from leaving graffiti on the vacant building, which eventually will become a transit station. As the 20-mile, 21-station rail project acquires more properties, the beautification program could be expanded to include some of them.

Since HART picked up the Aiea building in December 2012, it has repainted it a couple times because of graffiti. HART Chief Executive Officer Dan Grabauskas said the hope is that taggers will respect rather than deface the artwork, leaving the community with a more pleasing sight.

Steve Ahmed, owner of Car Stereo Express, which is situated next to the future transit station, said the vacant building’s appearance hurt his business.

"I wouldn’t take my family to a neighborhood that has nothing but graffiti and rubbish," Ahmed said, adding that he sees the new project as a good idea.

HART recruited beautification program volunteers from Waipahu, Aiea and Radford high schools and the Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii Hale Pono Ewa Beach Clubhouse. In addition, about 20 businesses and various organizations pitched in with artwork supplies and refreshments for the mural effort, Mariani-Belding said.

Waipahu High students were given two middle panels to cover with images representing themes of "work" and "play."

Midway through their planning, though, students were asked to tweak their design because officials wanted the images specific to the neighborhood — not the whole island, said Waipahu High art teacher Gloria Jakahi.

That forced students to do more work, but it was a good lesson about a career in the art world, Jakahi said.

"This is how it is," she said. "You have a client. You have to compromise. … In the end, it’s the client that you have to listen to. You have to make adjustments, which means back to the old drawing board."

For Waipahu High’s Cutaran, 17, the mural work is rewarding in that it provides an opportunity to "contribute to the community" by changing a previously run-down space into "something beautiful and meaningful."