PROSPECT-LEFFERTS GARDENS — A group of local residents are looking for volunteers to join a major clean-up of the neighborhood’s commercial strip this weekend, they said.
The crew, comprised so far of about 25 volunteers and a few dozen teenagers from a local youth program, plan to sweep and scrub Flatbush Avenue from Church to Lefferts avenues on Saturday with rakes, brooms and bags lent by the city Department of Sanitation, organizers said.
The idea for the clean-up came from a group of residents of a Prospect-Lefferts Gardens Facebook group who had grown weary of seeing refuse on the avenue, said Virgina Bechtold, one of the organizers of the event who lives in the area.
“The trash on sidewalks, chicken bones, the litter … it doesn’t make it a welcoming place to shop and live,” she said of Flatbush Avenue.
More volunteers are needed for the effort, she said, and are encouraged to sign up to help through the event’s Facebook page. Or, interested locals can simply show up and join a clean-up team at 8:30 a.m. Sunday at Parkside Plaza at the corner of Parkside and Ocean avenues, she said.
“It’s just a grassroots day of getting together to actually show a commitment to what’s going on in the neighborhood,” she said.
And for volunteers with green thumbs, the neighborhood’s Ocean by the Park Tree Club will donate a limited amount of daffodil bulbs to those who help clean up, to be planted in public spaces in the area, Bechtold said.
The Flatbush Avenue Clean-Up Day will take place on Saturday, Nov. 7 starting at 8:30 a.m. at Parkside Plaza.
