Ala Moana Park reopens at 4 a.m. tomorrow, and city officials hope that park users will find a cleaner and more family-friendly facility.

The park has been closed since Tuesday to allow crews to do long-awaited repairs and maintenance. The work has ranged from repainting parking stalls, curbs and restrooms to heavier tasks such as tree-trimming, plumbing and repairing benches.

City officials also were able to redistribute sand from the 'ewa end of the park to the area in front of the tennis courts. Some parts of the beach had been eroding over the years, and this was the first chance the city had to address the problem, said Lester Chang, parks director.

He said all that work couldn't have been done without closing the park.

"It's been going very, very well," Chang said. "We have been able to do things that we haven't done in years."

Ocean Safety Lt. Bill Ingram, who has been an Ala Moana lifeguard for 19 years, said a lot of the work has been subtle, and that many people may not notice the changes. But to old-timers like himself, there has been an "amazing improvement," he said.

"I'm ecstatic," Ingram said. "I came in this morning and I went, 'Yeah! It's already looking good.' This is like a spring cleaning."

Since Tuesday, dozens of employees of various city departments have been working to "put the shine back to one of our jewel parks," Chang said. Some work, such as redoing the floors of the restrooms, will be done later, he said.

In the four weeks leading up to the project, officials had closed the park at night, forcing an estimated 200 homeless people to find other places to live. The park will remain closed from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. until the end of June, when Mayor Mufi Hannemann will decide whether to make the night closure permanent.

Chang said he has recommended to the mayor that the park be kept closed at night.

"The overall public sentiment, other than where the homeless are going to go, has been very, very positive about us doing this," Chang said.

Yesterday afternoon, a few homeless people were sleeping in the park, but absent were the dozens of tents and makeshift shelters that spanned the 120-acre regional facility before the night closures went into effect.

Although the park's two entrances were blocked yesterday, the beach was open and a handful of people were sunning themselves while many surfers took advantage of a south swell. Joggers, walkers and bicyclists also made their way along the empty roadway.

Ingram agreed that the park needed to be closed to allow crews, some using heavy equipment, to do the work. He said the city would never have been able to paint picnic tables, trim trees, replace street lights or move the sand if thousands of people and cars had been in the park.

"The coral has been exposed. It was so bad you couldn't walk on it, and they completely covered that over with sand that they moved," Ingram said. "So it's fantastic for anyone who wants to walk down the beach."

Reach Curtis Lum at culum@honoluluadvertiser.com.