If you built up your muscles shoveling snow this winter, then you’re feeling fit and ready to play happy cleanup in your neighborhood. Right?
OK, maybe you’re sore and in no mood to be happy about anything. Shrug it off already! Spring is arriving in the early afternoon of Thursday, March 20, and there are things to do. One of the them is tidying up after a rough season.
You can help do that on April 5, the date of the city’s seventh annual “Spring Clean Up.” For the past several years, residents have spruced up parks and rec centers, swept up city streets, raked up debris, planted flowers and picked up trash. Last year, for example, more than 13,000 volunteers picked up more than a million pounds of trash and more than 23,000 pounds of recyclables. That sounds like a record, and it was.
There are plenty of Northeast projects this year that can use some extra hands. Most local cleanups target specific areas and run from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Some projects aren’t on the city’s official list yet. For example, members of the Frankford Parks Group, who routinely look after “pocket parks” in Frankford at Mulberry and Meadow, Hedge and Orthodox streets and Tackawanna and Meadow, aren’t on the city’s list, but they will be out there on April 5. Also not on the city’s list are members of the Greater Bustleton Civic League. Jack O’Hara, the league’s president, said the civic group is signed up and will be tidying up Grant Avenue traffic islands from the Boulevard to Krewstown Road and then will work on the traffic islands on Red Lion Road.
A list of Northeast locations follows, but that list might grow by April 5, so if you know of a local project not listed below, check with whoever organized it last year.
• Overington Park, 4600 Leiper St.
• St. Martin’s, 5450 Roosevelt Blvd.
• Take Back Your Neighborhood, 6500 Castor Ave.
• Mayfair Memorial Playground, 3201 Ryan Ave.
• 8297 Bustleton Ave.
• Tarheels Community Clean, Summerdale Avenue and the Boulevard to Summerdale and Oxford avenues
• Lardner’s Point Park, 5101 Levick St.
• Frankford Avenue, 7300 Frankford Ave.
• 1300 block of Ascot Place, Somerton
• Hayes Playground, 9935 President St.
• Lighthouse Soccer Club, Roosevelt Boulevard and Southampton Road
The city provides rakes, shovels, brooms and work gloves, but nobody will tell you not to bring your own favorite tools. Not a lot of prep is necessary for this event. Volunteers just show up ready to work.
The city provides trash pickups for registered projects. To register your project, visit www.philadelphiastreets.com/philly-spring-cleanup ••
