Davenport gets its spring cleaning
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By Tory Brecht | Thursday, May 08, 2008 |
Ghazala Irshad from Paragon Interiors picks up trash Thursday in the alley behind Emerson Place during the annual Downtown Davenport Cleanup Day. Buy this Photo
Sunny weather and a rapidly receding Mississippi River made the perfect setting for a grassroots effort to spruce up downtown Davenport on Thursday.
More than 150 volunteers signed up for the 24th annual Downtown Davenport Cleanup Day, making it the biggest effort yet in the event’s quarter-century of spring cleaning.
“The flood gave us a little more to do, and we’ve had a lot more volunteers,” said Marcy Hyder, Davenport One’s director of downtown events. DavenportOne hosts the spring cleanup each year.
Armed with a plastic “pick-up stick” the perfect size for plucking spent cigarette butts out of the grates around tree trunks, Ann Carion patrolled the Bucktown area of 2nd Street looking for refuse.
The accountant was the first Bucktown volunteer to get out. Most of the area business owners are artists and don’t roll into work until the crack of 11 a.m. or so, she said.
“Appearance is very important,” she said of the corner of Davenport recently improved with new facades and new businesses. “There will be a lot of people coming through downtown in the next few months.”
Keeping the area litter-free and fresh-looking also helps fight the stereotype some have of downtown Davenport as a dirty and dangerous location, Carion said.
“It’s really come a long way, but it has to be lit up and looking like someone takes care of it,” she said of the central city.
Jerry Reynolds and Lisa Hopkins — who work at Carriage Place Photography — came all the way from Blue Grass, Iowa, to help spruce up Davenport.
Although their business is in another city, they frequent the downtown and want to help improve its image.
On Thursday morning, the two scoured the sidewalk and parking lot behind the empty Blackhawk Hotel on 4th Street, picking up plastic bottles and other detritus strewn from passing cars and pedestrians.
“We felt like this was something that would actually, positively, help the community,” Reynolds said. “It’s actually cleaner than I thought it would be already.”
Although many volunteers were motivated by pictures of mud and driftwood left behind by the flood, the cleanup organizers asked workers to stay north of River Drive. Hyder said the retreating waters left behind contaminated silt and sand that pose a safety hazard that’s better for trained city crews to deal with.
Still, there was plenty of area to cover between the Centennial and Government bridges and River Drive and 6th Street for the record number of volunteers to tackle.
“It’s growing every year,” Hyder said. “We’re over 150 volunteers, and that’s the most I’ve ever seen.”
Tory Brecht can be contacted at (563) 383-2329 or tbrecht@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.
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