Kekaulike Mall, a decades-old shopping destination located in the heart of Chinatown, has undergone a major face-lift.

Begun in April 2023 and finished earlier this year, the city Department of Transportation Services’ $4.4-million mall improvement project includes new pavement with cast-in-place concrete, a better stormwater management and drainage system, new shade trees and landscaping, new lighting and electrical improvements and, to top it off, a newly installed gold and red dragon.

The dragon — a sizable, colorful decal made of concrete and formerly located on King Street — was recently relocated and now sits prominently at the center of the mall at 1028 Kekaulike St.

Built along a corridor that stands between Hotel and King streets, the mall serves not only as a marketplace for local merchants, shoppers and pedestrians but is close to transit lines, according to DTS Director Roger Morton.

“This mall looks so great right now,” he said during a news conference at the mall Friday. “My mahalo is to all of these merchants that are here and put up with us as we constructed the mall.”

He added it was “a Herculean event just to move all of the stalls around.”

“And I know we disrupted business, but I know it was worth it when you see the final product.”

Moreover, Morton said the mall is in proximity to TheBus route as well as the nearly $10 billion Skyline’s Chinatown station — Station 17 — that’s planned along the rail’s third and final segment to Kakaako, which is scheduled for completion by 2031.

Chu Lan Schubert-Kwock, a community activist and Downtown-Chinatown Neighborhood Board member, said the mall rehabilitation project was a long time in coming.

“This whole project started in 2009 — to envision the dragon, because Chinatown didn’t have a center,” she said at the news conference. “So (Chinatown Business &Community Association) formulated this idea to have a dragon to be the heart and soul of Chinatown.”

Honglong Li, the city’s project manager, said the Kekaulike Mall project suffered months-long delays in its completion, a project originally slated to be finished by last October.

“We stopped in March/April, but we had other long lead items; we had to wait,” Li told the Honolulu Star- Advertiser, adding that included properly installing the dragon decal as the mall’s centerpiece. “So we installed the dragon about May of this year … The project’s (full) construction period was about a year.”

Wesley Fong, chair of the Chinatown Outreach Task Force, said he is hopeful the improved Kekaulike Mall, as well as other city improvements made within Chinatown in the past few years, will boost the area economy.

“To us, we really appreciate all of the initiatives that the mayor has done for Chinatown, but to me the bottom line is will it improve the business of all the merchants here?” Fong told the Star-Advertiser after the event. “A lot of the merchants are living from hand to mouth. I mean how many bananas and papayas can you sell?”

He said he hoped the work will make Chinatown “secure, safe and more attractive.”

“You’ve got to remember, Chinatown has had its share of disasters: pandemic, homeless, high crime, drugs, and very recently, the power outage. And that really scared away a lot of our visitors,” Fong said, adding his goal for Chinatown as a whole is “to be a tourist destination, just like Waikiki.”