NEIGHBORHOOD IMPROVEMENTS

Clean Streets at One Year

Six Million Pounds of Trash and Counting!

The results are clearly visible one year after the launch of Clean Streets. Chinatown is cleaner and more inviting than ever. 

If you've spent any time in Chinatown lately, you've probably noticed one or more of the two dozen Clean Streets workers in bright yellow jackets. They're on the streets seven days a week, from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., sweeping, bagging trash for pickup, disinfecting, painting street fixtures and removing graffiti. In winter, they use snowblowers, shovels and ice choppers to clear crosswalks, cut paths at bus stops and clear fire hydrants where necessary.

The Clean Streeters bag an average of 100,000 pounds of trash a week in 4,000 bags. That's over six million pounds of trash to date, and counting! Over 1,500 lamp posts, mail boxes, fire hydrants, alarm boxes and crossing lines have been painted.

The Word on the Street about Clean Streets:

"As Chairman of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in New York, I can say that our members are delighted with the work that the Chinatown Partnership has done, especially the Clean Streets program."

David Louie
Chairman
Chinese Chamber of Commerce in New York

"The fact that the Chinatown Partnership has brought the Clean Streets program to this area, I think, has significantly helped the perception that Chinatown is improving, and is a more welcome place for people to come to visit the shops, the restaurants and all the other activities that are here."

Victor Pei
President
Elite HK Corp.

“What a pleasure for  me to walk through Chinatown on my current visit to New York. Your group, in a short two months, was able to do more cleanup than many of us had been able to do in the last several years….“

Dr. Nelson Ying
Mahayana Buddhist Temple

“Thank you for your organization’s arduous work in improving the environment in Chinatown. It is much cleaner and more inviting than before….We appreciate all the men and women you have employed this past year that have diligently cleaned our streets.”

Stephan Chan
Oversea Chinese Mission

Next Steps
Moving ahead, we will be working with property owners to get their waivers for us to remove graffiti, power washing the neighborhood's "Dirty Dozen" sidewalks, cleaning the monuments and statues in Chatham Square and enhancing tree wells. Check back here for Clean Streets updates as these projects progress.

Clean Streets Background
In a neighborhood as dense and full of restaurants as Chinatown, it's no surprise that most complaints over the years have been about dirty streets and foul odors. Extensive research conducted by the Rebuild Chinatown Initiative confirmed Chinatown's most pressing need: a systematic and sustainable approach to keeping the neighborhood clean. Until now, this has been an elusive goal.

How is “Clean Streets” succeeding where other programs have not? We began by sending our community outreach representatives out to talk to business owners to ensure their cooperation. Then our experts did a detailed assessment of every street in Chinatown, using handheld computers to record over 1,400 issues, including graffiti, potholes, ripped awnings and that wad of gum destined for the bottom of your shoe.

Using customized mapping software, the neighborhood was divided into "zones." From our office at 60 St. James Street in Chatham Square, the Clean Streets team is dispatched into these zones, armed with state-of-the-art tools and cleansers.

The Chinatown Partnership has also placed 50 new, 200-pound, shot-blasted steel, green trash cans around Chinatown. To sponsor a basket, contact us.

Clean Streets is run by veterans of the New York City Department of Sanitation, and is a partnership with the New York City Department of Small Business Services.