The International Market Place — more than two years after opening a glitzy $500 million shopping complex in the heart of Waikiki — is redesigning its Kalakaua Avenue entrance to improve the flow of customers.

The center is “redesigning and repositioning” a spouting water feature to improve the traffic flow and safety at the entrance of the shopping center, said Breana Grosz, the center’s marketing and sponsorship director.

“We are not removing any cultural elements,” she said.

Barriers were placed Wednesday around the spouting water feature and surrounding greenery, palm trees and walk path in preparation for construction. Grosz didn’t give a time frame for the redesign.

Tenants say foot traffic is low at the center, which has struggled to attract more locals to Waikiki and fill stores with tourists since reopening in August 2016.

“The center is not doing well at all and I know many employees who tell me stories of the lack of sales revenue,” said longtime Waikiki resident Dave Moskowitz. “They probably have decided that the water feature is a physical block to entry psychologically. Well that may be true to some extent, but not enough to compensate for sluggish sales.”

The center has lost a number of tenants, including at least two of eight original restaurants on the third floor Grand Lanai. The more than 150-seat Baku Waikiki restaurant closed after nine months last June. Two months later, Yauatcha Waikiki served its last dim sum at the Waikiki center.

The once kitschy marketplace lined with carts full of costume jewelry, faux lei and made-in-China trinkets was turned into 345,000 square feet of now upscale retailers and restaurants, anchored by an 80,000-square-foot Saks Fifth Avenue.

“It’s so different from the last time I was down here. It’s nice and it’s fancy, but I think it had more of a Hawaiian feel to it the way it used to be,” said Makakilo resident Kimmy Collett, 48, who was walking through the center Wednesday. “It just seems so many things are becoming more and more modern. It would be nice to have more stuff with more of the Hawaiian spirit than it starting to look like the mainland. We come down every once in a while just to get the feel of things, but it’s … just more stores, especially stores that not the average every day person can afford.”