Clean, Safe & Green

Through the Clean, Safe & Green Partnership, the city outsources downtown sidewalk cleaning services to our organization. These services include picking up litter, leaves and debris from sidewalks in a 440 block area, as well as weed eradication. We also steam clean homeless waste spots and remove handbills. We pick up an average of 250,000 gallons of trash and leaves every year. The team starts cleaning at 6 a.m., every day of the week. Sidewalk cleaning machines are used in tandem with manual cleaning.

The goal is to keep downtown clean, safe and green. The program is responsive to the needs of the areas, businesses and daily situations.

• The business community and downtown neighborhoods support the program, its effectiveness and responsiveness.
• Residents, businesses, employees and visitors benefit from the service and a cleaner, safer and greener downtown.
• We contract a local, minority-owned and operated company - Community Business Group, located in Jackson Ward - for the downtown sidewalk cleaning program.

In addition to downtown sidewalk cleaning, our organization maintains gateway beautification projects for the City, including weeding, watering and installing seasonal plants. The contractor for the beautification projects is Kleane Kare, which is another local and minority-owned business aiding in our efforts downtwon. Their workforce fluctuates with the seasons, but consists largely of people of color.

The beautification projects include:

• 137 planters
• 88 planters in 3rd and 5th Street gateway area
• 21 planters on Broad Street between 8th and 10th Street
• 28 Broad Street planters relocated to Coliseum area
• 2 blocks of Broad Street medians between Foushee to 1st Street
• 3rd Street median
• 12th and Canal median
• 14th and Dock Street median
• 38 hanging flower baskets in Shockoe Bottom
• 13 planting beds on 400 block of E. Grace Stret
• Maggie Walker Plaza

Image Credit: "450 Downtown Blocks are Cleaned Each Year" - Lewis Ginter