An estimated 250 people picked up trash or helped repaint some buildings in Chinatown during a community cleanup day Saturday.

Adults and kids in shirts representing various organizations — wearing gloves with trash bags in hand — walked along the sidewalks of the Chinatown Special District comprising a large section of the downtown area bounded by Nimitz Highway, South Beretania Street, River Street and Nuuanu Avenue.

Some of the heaviest activity during the morning was along Nuuanu Avenue.

“We have a crew out here helping to paint. … we have crews out here also cleaning up utility poles, fire hydrants, mailboxes that are full of graffiti,” said Russell Lau, president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, which sponsored the cleanup.

Other organizations and businesses that supported the effort included the Honolulu Japanese Chamber of Commerce, the United Chinese Society of Hawaii and Hawaiian Electric Co., Lau said. The City and County of Honolulu was also well- represented, with the Board of Water Supply and the Honolulu Police Department among the agencies lending a hand.

Lau and other members of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce were stationed at the corner of South King Street and Nuuanu Avenue and started cleaning around 9 a.m. He said he thought only about 70 or so people would show up but was able to end the cleanup early and had to tell some participating organizations they had more than enough people to help.

“We thought it would take us about three hours. Right now it’s about 10:30 and we’re pretty much done,” Lau said.

Gregory Dunn, president and CEO of the Hawaii Theatre Center, and nearly 20 volunteers applied a fresh coat of paint to some of the buildings on Nuuanu Avenue owned by the center.

“We’re trying to freshen up the look (of this area). One of our major initiatives is to make this stretch of Chinatown more hospitable and more enjoyable to encourage local folks to come down and enjoy a walkable neighborhood district,” Dunn said.

Some of the buildings are in disrepair, and Dunn said he wants to use HTC funding to make them usable again, but the theater has just been scraping by during the COVID-19 outbreak.

One of those buildings is the roughly 3,000-square-foot Pantheon Saloon building that hasn’t been occupied in some 40 years and is “ready to collapse,” Dunn said. He’s trying to get the historic building fixed but is waiting on an injection of funds before doing so.

“We’re … trying to find ways and secure donors to help restore the building so we can turn that back into a usable space,” he said.

Honolulu Mayor Rick Blan­giardi also was in the Chinatown cleanup crew.

“We made a promise … to do something for Chinatown that has been talked about forever and has not been done. The time has come,” Blan­gi­ardi said.

He said the city is about to launch its Crisis Outreach Response and Engagement program to use mental health and medical specialists instead of police to respond to calls involving homeless individuals. The city also recently started 24-hour police foot patrols in the area to control crime.

Lau hopes to host more community-oriented events like Saturday’s cleanup so a revitalized Chinatown can become an attractive destination for visitors. He compared it to New York City’s Times Square, which was transformed into a popular tourist destination.

“But 20 years ago it wasn’t a very good place to be. … Nobody wanted to go near Times Square,” he said. “I’d like to see this whole area revitalized in the same type of fashion.”