Dozens of Volunteers Clean Up Seedy East 86th Street Corridor

MANHATTAN – The busy East 86th Street corridor got a much needed cleaning today— thanks to dozens of volunteers, led by the East 86th Street Association, who spent hours Saturday afternoon picking up trash littering the sidewalks and working to clean graffiti off vacant storefronts lining East 86th Street from Second to Park Avenues. 

Armed with brooms, grabbers and a slew of trash cans, a team of forty-five volunteers got to work on the corridor starting at noon and spent hours picking up garbage and sprucing up East 86th Street, as well as Third Avenue from East 84th to East 88th Streets.

“It was another great day on East 86th Street. Residents, merchants, and neighbors banded together to take to the streets, brooms and pickers in hand, to make a difference and clean our streets,” East 86th Street Association Vice President Andrew Fine told Upper East Site.

Volunteers picked up so much trash from the sidewalk Saturday afternoon, by the end of the clean up they had filled twenty large garbage bags. They also picked up lots of cardboard, wood, plastic mats and even luggage abandoned on the busy sidewalks. 

Among those who turned out to help with the cleanup included staff from the new Target store and Chick-Fil-A— which went the extra mile and provided meals to volunteers after the cleanup.

Also there to help with the cleanup was incoming City Council Member Julie Menin, who succeeds Ben Kallos in representing those who live in District 5 which includes much of the Upper East Side. 

“Yep it’s back!” Menin wrote on Twitter, “the East 86th Street Association Clean Team was back in action this afternoon!”

Lending a hand with graffiti removal today was ACE New York and the Wildcat Service Corporation, which provide cleanup services and creates transitional employment opportunities New Yorkers. 

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Wildcat workers were able to scrape all the spray paint off of the windows of the former Children’s Place store and the metal roll down shutters on the old Cohen’s Fashion Optical next door.

“It is the hope of the Association that the use of these services can expanded to meet the need of the community,” Fine said.

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