The four-acre Nani Kai section of Ulehawa Beach Park — setting of a major homeless population on the Wai'anae Coast for more than two years — was open once more to the public yesterday afternoon.

The park was evacuated and shut down for repairs on Feb. 11, and about two dozen maintenance workers, carpenters, painters, welders, electricians, plumbers, masons and tree-trimmers spent the week cleaning up the mess.

While the park was officially closed for five days, much of the general population had avoided it for some time because of the tent city that had grown there over many months. Tent dwellers were given notice in December that the evacuation was coming.

Of the estimated 100 people occupying Nani Kai beach, all but a couple of stragglers had moved out by the time the city closed the facilities on Monday.

Yesterday, workers put on the final touches before the park officially reopened at 3:30 p.m.

"I gotta be smiling, yeah?" said groundskeeper Jeff Omura. "I got my park back."

Maintaining a park occupied by an around-the-clock human population has been a challenge, Omura said. Watering the grass, for example, had been next to impossible with so many tents pitched around the grounds.

With some automatic sprinklers shut off for extended periods and others broken or vandalized, workers said the watering system won't be fully operational again until sometime next week. Otherwise, the spiffed-up park looked almost good as new.

Fil Basilio also was smiling. The building maintenance repair worker got to erect the sign giving the park its new name: Nani Kai Beach Park. Basilio also put up signs saying that, henceforth, the park will be closed to the public daily from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. — virtually ruling out a return of tent dwellers.

Throughout the morning and afternoon, a small stream of visitors began dropping by.

Diana Orr, who lives nearby, brought along her 17-month-old foster daughter, Alissa Meachum, who, wearing a one-piece red bathing suit, enjoyed trying to catch water drops from the open-air shower faucet on her tongue.

"I had been wanting to bring her to the park," Orr said. "But I just didn't feel safe. I feel bad for those people, but it's nice to come to the park."

Tourists Michael Donaldson and Carol Vasek of Indianapolis parked their car in the newly striped parking lot and sat at a freshly painted green park bench to get a glimpse of the sea before catching their plane back to Indiana later in the afternoon. They described the beach park as "pleasant, peaceful and quiet."

"Where else can you sit and see something this beautiful at this time of the year?" Vasek said.

Surfers Beach, which sits between Nani Kai Beach Park and nearby Ma'ili Stream, also was shut down and cleaned up beginning Monday. About 20 homeless people from that location were evacuated.

Over on the Wai'anae side of Ma'ili Stream, folks at a large homeless encampment known as 7-Elevens Beach were keeping a wary eye on the goings-on across the way — as if in anticipation of what could be coming.

But Parks and Recreation Director Lester Chang said the city has not decided where its next park cleanup operation on the coast will occur, or when it will take place.

"We're looking for what I call 'target rich areas,' where we think the community will benefit the most," he said, pointing out that Nani Kai was considered such an area.

APPLAUSE ALL AROUND

Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann also visited Nani Kai yesterday to inspect the work and heap praise on all those involved in making it happen. That included Chang's department, Honolulu police and the Department of Community Services, which Hannemann said worked with area service providers to place around 40 percent of evacuated homeless into shelters. Most of the rest moved in with relatives or friends, or transferred their tent and belongings to other beaches along the coast, officials said.

The mayor also applauded the involvement of community members who pledged to help in keeping the park safe and well maintained.

Ed Lauer, general manager of Sea Country, a modern 800-home subdivision about a mile from the beach, said he and about four dozen volunteers from the Sea Country Community Association had adopted Nani Kai Beach Park and Surfers Beach.

"We're going to be locking the restroom facility nightly at 10 p.m. and opening it again in the morning," he said. "We're going to come in once a week and pick up trash and paint out any graffiti."

The community volunteer effort, he said, would be coordinated through police.

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.