The Downtown Honolulu Business Improvement District Brings New Life
The city’s Downtown Honolulu Business Improvement District has been working to clean up the neighborhood, make it safer and give people more reasons to come.
Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino
As the sun rises and before much of Downtown Honolulu has begun to stir, a team from the city’s Downtown Honolulu Business Improvement District is moving through its streets.
Sporting pink polo shirts, the Aloha Ambassadors sweep sidewalks, discard litter and remove graffiti from public spaces. On Tuesdays and Fridays, they arrive as early as 5 a.m. to prepare Fort Street Mall before vendors set up for the morning market.
But cleaning our streets is only part of their job.
If they spot people who appear to be in crisis, whether from houselessness or something else, they first determine whether they need help. “If they’re willing to take help and they need help, we get them help,” says Brooke Klejnot, president and executive director of the group, which is funded through assessments from commercial property owners.
BID, as the business improvement district is known, works alongside The Institute for Human Services, a nonprofit focused on ending homelessness, and the city’s Crisis Outreach Response and Engagement team, as well as other social service providers, to connect those in need with medical care, housing support and other services.
It’s part of a bigger effort to make Downtown and Fort Street Mall more inviting while preserving their character and personality. This means cleaning up the streets and making them safer, but also giving people more reasons to visit Downtown, including the Fort Street Mall Open Market, which BID organizes.
Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino
Every Tuesday and Friday morning, vendors set up tables and tents to sell produce, prepared foods and other goods along the pedestrian walkway, and night markets feature food and entertainment after work hours.
BID is also reaching out to artists, businesses and event organizers to find new ways to activate the area. One event that came from that effort is Books, Brews and Beats at Drip Studio HNL, located on Fort Street Mall. Along with a book exchange, artisans and musicians showcase their art and provide entertainment.
Maia Mayeshiro, creator of Books, Brews and Beats, hopes to make the event quarterly to foster a sense of community. After moving to Chinatown at age 17, she says she’s always seen potential in Fort Street Mall and was surprised more wasn’t happening there.
Then she started seeing the people in pink. “When I saw them popping out with their pink shirts and like cleaning the space, I’m like, this is so serendipitous and perfect,” she says.
Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino
The ambassadors’ presence encouraged her to organize the event, which she says she couldn’t have done without BID’s guidance. She says bringing people to Fort Street Mall isn’t about making it something different, but rather to give more people the opportunity to experience what’s already there. “I’m really just trying to create the neighborhood that I want to live in,” she says.
Dwight Byrum Jr. is HONOLULU’s fall 2026 editorial intern. A senior at UH Mānoa, he is set to graduate in December 2026.
