ASTORIA — Cleaning crews have started to tackle the garbage and overgrown weeds that proliferate on streets in and around Astoria Park, following complaints from residents about litter and maintenance issues in the area.
Teams of workers have been deployed to pick up trash, empty garbage cans and remove weeds on streets both inside the park and immediately around it, City Councilman Costa Constantinides announced Friday.
Since the end of last month, workers from the nonprofit The Doe Fund began cleaning Shore Boulevard in Astoria Park, a problem spot because of garbage left behind by park-goers that often ends up polluting the nearby waterfront.
"So much garbage ends up blowing off Shore Boulevard into the river," Constantinides said.
The councilman's office is also targeting Hoyt Avenue North between 21st and 29th streets — what he called the "gateway to Astoria Park" — where the sidewalks are often overgrown with weeds as high as four feet tall.
"The weeds and the garbage were out of control," he said.
To combat the overgrowth, workers from the Association of Community Employment Programs for the Homeless (ACE) have begun landscaping the sidewalks and removing weeds along the roadway.
The group began the work in September and will continue through October, and are set to return in the spring from April to June, according to Constantinides.
In addition to the cleaning crews, Astoria Park is set to get an extra maintenance staffer next summer, paid for with $18,000 through a City Council initiative that provides extra funding to neighborhood parks.
The street cleanings are part of Constantinides' "Keep Astoria Clean" campaign that he launched last year after hearing complaints from constituents about garbage in the neighborhood.
Cleaning crews from The Doe Fund — which employs homeless and formerly incarcerated men — already take care of several busy commercial streets in Astoria, including parts of 30th Avenue, Steinway Street, Ditmars Boulevard, 23rd Avenue and Newtown Road.
