MOUNT VERNON — When April showers arrive on the scene, people’s thoughts turn to gardening, lawn care and spring cleaning. Members of the Heritage Centre Association are no different, but their thoughts have turned toward sprucing up downtown Mount Vernon. A revival of the old custom of freshening up South Main Street will occur on Saturday morning. The Short North will also get a once over.
Corby Wise, president of the Heritage Centre Association, said the plan is to give the downtown business district a good cleaning. Part of the plan is to rid the sidewalks and curbs of some of the leftover gravel, to get all the winter dust and dirt out of the way.
“It was such a long and hideous winter,” he said.
Volunteers will be pulling weeds where needed, picking up litter and sweeping downtown, and Wise said it would be appreciated if businesses would sweep their sidewalk debris into the curb ahead of time. He and Mount Vernon Mayor Richard Mavis will be manning a fire hose to wash the sidewalks and curbs and sweep everything into the storm drains. They have received training from the Mount Vernon Fire Department on how to connect the hose, tap into a hydrant and turn the water on and off.
Mavis said it would be nice to have some able-bodied volunteers to help handle the fire hose.
“We need one person to hold the nozzle and another person to hold the back of the hose,” he said. “It’s really tiring, so we try to have a shift of people to rotate on that.”
As the cleanup progresses, Mavis said the street will be barricaded off one block at a time, and intersections, cross walks and handicapped ramps will also get cleaned.
Like most merchants downtown, First-Knox National Bank tries to keep its area fairly clean all the time, so they haven’t scheduled anything special to do on Saturday, said director of marketing Jesse Marlow.
“The cleanup is a great idea,” he added. “It’s kind of fun to get the downtown businesses together and clean up.”
Wise said community members wanting to participate may bring a broom and gather on South Main Street bright and early Saturday morning at 7.
