Petco Park’s 22-block neighborhood now has its own cleaning crew

The neighborhood around Petco Park now has its own, dedicated crew working to make it clean and safe.

Local businesses in the area created the new district in June to clean and improve the 22-block ballpark area. The Ballpark District now employs workers from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day picking up trash, power washing sidewalks, and beautifying the neighborhood.

“Everybody recognized, and major stakeholders in the ballpark recognized, that this area drew larger crowds than anywhere else in downtown, and so there needed to be an operation plan that matched the intensity of that use,” said district manager Dominic Li Mandri.

To run the maintenance work, the group hired New City America, the firm that manages similar programs in Little Italy and East Village.

Li Mandri, who also directs the East Village district, said businesses around the ballpark have spent years asking for better neighborhood services.

Those businesses include Sempra and the Padres, which both have representatives on the Ballpark District’s nonprofit board.

The Central Library, concert venue Quartyard, MTS headquarters and 12th & Imperial Transit Center – where all major trolley lines meet for transfers – also have a huge amount of activity within the district bounds. UCSD’s Park & Market building is just outside the district’s boundaries, which include nearby Cowboy Star.

The new district now oversees the area amid Petco Park’s ballooning attendance and increasingly busy event schedule. But the broader East Village area is also home to downtown’s highest density of homes and its largest homeless population, according to Downtown Partnership’s monthly counts.

That is because many of San Diego’s homeless service providers relocated to East Village in the ‘80s and ‘90s after a city push to revitalize the Gaslamp. At the time, East Village was a warehouse district with tons of vacant lots seen as underutilized.

But Petco Park’s completion in 2004 fueled East Village’s own revitalization. Twenty years later, the neighborhood has welcomed thousands of new residents, particularly where towers have sprouted around Petco.

“The initiative of the Ballpark District was not only to accommodate the increased fans and employees and workers that come into our district day in, day out, but also to create more of a livable situation on the ground for our residents to enjoy and to patronize those public spaces and those businesses, so that we can see more of a revitalizing effect with this density,” Li Mandri said.

Before the Ballpark District cleaning crews hit the streets this summer, the area was covered by the Downtown Partnership’s Clean & Safe program, which provides cleaning and homeless outreach services for all of downtown.

But that program dedicated 21 workers to the 130 blocks of East Village. The new district relies on 20 learning crew members for the 22-block area.

The Downtown Partnership confirmed that Clean & Safe team members who worked the Ballpark District have been reassigned throughout downtown.

The new Ballpark District crew collected 160,000 pounds of trash between July 1 and Oct. 31.

“We’re averaging about 1300 pounds of trash a day,” Li Mandri said. “It really just comes from sweeping up sidewalks every day, emptying the 70 trash cans that are in the ballpark district every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. It’s just having (an) around-the-clock service model that we’ve been able to pull this amount of trash and post these impressive numbers in such a short amount of time.”

They do more than take out trash and powerwash. Li Mandri said workers’ duties are intentionally flexible. They also work on tree trimming, landscaping and security.

Now that workers have been on the streets for a few months, the district is expanding into beautification and streetscape improvements. They’ve rolled out new branding on trash cans, doggy bag dispensers and outdoor seating areas to make it obvious when someone is inside the Ballpark District. The crew this month installed holiday lighting, too.

“What our mission is right now, is creating a new sense of place within downtown and making sure that when people come to the Ballpark District, they have a stellar, premier experience,” Li Mandri said. “This is really a comprehensive approach to turning the Ballpark District around.”

Properties in the Ballpark District still send annual assessment fees to the downtown Property and Business Improvement District, run by the Downtown Partnership.

But under a renewed 10-year contract with the city, that program now transfers fees from within the 22-block area to the Ballpark District’s new nonprofit, to pay for the new and improved services. The nonprofit then seeks additional grants, foundation donations and sponsorships to cover more work.

The city’s increased parking fees on street meters around the ballpark do not fund the district. But Li Mandri said those fees still help, since the city uses them to repair street lights.

“We just want the community to understand that the Ballpark District is operating here around the clock, so that people… have that confidence that they can walk outside and feel safe in their district,” Li Mandri said. “That’s not something that’s going to happen overnight, but through the consistency of presence and services, I think that’s how we begin to rehabilitate the image of not only the ballpark, but also East Village.”