SBID Gets New Toys
by Bill Dusty
On Tuesday, the work of the Springfield Business Improvement District (SBID) was saluted by Mayor Domenic Sarno for their efforts to provide downtown workers, residents and visitors with cleaner and safer city streets.
“These things are important because we have a clean and safe neighborhood, a clean and safe downtown… you can’t put a price tag on that,” said Sarno.
Much of the work is performed by the SBID’s “Clean Team” work force, which partners with the Hampden County Sherriff’s Department to provide some of the crews, said SBID Public Relations and Marketing Manager Sarah Fitzgerald.
“At any given time,” Fitzgerald said, “you can see members of the Clean Team sweeping the downtown, removing graffiti, or maintaining any of the three hundred hanging flower baskets that we have provided the downtown.”
Members of the “Clean Team” were in attendance at the press conference.
Fitzgerald announced the recent purchase of two new machines used by the Clean Team – a gum removal machine and a pressure washer – and said the team has been using them to clean up downtown’s sidewalks.
“These efforts create a beautiful atmosphere for the people that live, work and play in downtown Springfield,” Fitzgerald said.
Evan Plotkin, from the Real Estate management and brokerage company Samual D. Plotkin and Associates, Inc., said he has seen a vast improvement in the condition of the city’s downtown streets. “What I see every day when I drive into Springfield, now,” he said, “is something completely different than it was even a few years ago.”
He said the improvements to the roads, sidewalks and crosswalks has brought the downtown to “a new level.”
“And it’s really helpful for people in my business who are here to attract businesses to the city,” Plotkin said, citing “curb appeal” as an important factor when businesses consider locating downtown.
Then it was showtime for the new toys employed by the SBID to help keep the downtown clean. As Fitzgerald fielded questions from the media, the Clean Team fired up their new gum removal machine and pressure washer.
Unfortunately for the show, the male members of the media didn’t seem too interested in checking out the new toys in action as they swarmed around the sexy Fitzgerald and bombarded her with important questions (I’m sure!). A female reporter from CBS-3 (Miranda Grossman?) shot some video of the machines, then moved along. I snapped a couple of photos, myself, before calling it a day.
PDF 3 Responses for “SBID Gets New Toys”
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I have seen the pressure washer in action. I saw this guy using it to try to clean graffitti from a wall off an alley on Hampden St., behind the Student Prince.
He gave up after about 10 minutes, and the graffitti is still faintly there.
The only real question is whether or not they intend and think the street is cleaner since they removed all the public benches downtown. It used to be that many of my co-workers and I would come down to main street and eat our lunches on the benches during nice days. Since they were taken away or systematically stolen from downtown 2 summers ago, office tower workers have ceased going to the street and is just one more example of the non friendly nature of downtown since the control board siezed power.
It’s time to make springfield comfortable and functional for the citizens of the city, not for the business district at the expense of tha average folk. If this is an indication of the direction the pro-business anti-citizen Sarno administration is taking, it’s just another sad harbinger of the days when mayoralty was not beholden to special interests to the exclusion of average citizens.
Greg,
Actually, there are now benches downtown, in the plaza in front of the Sovereign Bank building. I’ve seen folks eating lunch and reading on them. Still no benches in Court Square, though (across the street). Last I heard, there were no plans to replace them, either.