“Neighbor members — draft your neighborhood associations and take charge of a section of the Street bordering your neighborhood. Business members — recruit your fellow business operators and release an employee or two to lead a team cleaning up the area of the street near your business.

“University members — organize a troop of students, faculty or other staff to help clean up the N.C. State side of the Street. City and other institutional members — provide support and encourage church youth groups, Y-guides, staff groups and others to show up and pitch in.”

This was the request George Chapman, chair of the Hillsborough Street Partnership, sent to the community in regard to the Hillsborough Street Cleanup scheduled to take place Saturday, April 29 at 9 a.m.

The cleanup is headed by the Hillsborough Street Partnership, a non-profit organization that began six years ago and is made up of about 30 people who sponsor various projects for Hillsborough Street throughout the year, including the spring cleanup. Chapman said the organization’s purpose is to “promote a better Hillsborough Street.”

According to Chapman, this event is “an event that gets volunteers to come to clean up the street.”

Chapman said the effort involves neighbors, families, kids, students and the city.

“It’s all aimed at making [Hillsborough Street] a more attractive place to be,” he said.

The volunteers are meeting at 9 a.m. at Compiegne Park where organizers will divide people into groups to clean up various sections of the street. After the volunteers pick up the trash, they will bring it back to the park so the city can pick it up and send it to the waste facilities.

“These things always lead to a better sense of community. I think that at this current time, the cleanup of Hillsborough Street is basically left up to the businesses, restaurants and residents who have an abode there,” Kevin Jennings, owner of Porter’s and Frazier’s, said.

Jennings is a board member of the Hillsborough Street Partnership who headed the endeavor, though he says he did not put in as much effort as he would have liked because of the opening of his new restaurant in North Hills.

The City Graffitti Team worked over the past week to remove as much graffiti as it can from the street in order to help with the effort.

Jennings stressed the importance of the cleanup in increasing the sense of community.

“You want to add those students,” he said. “You want to be able to walk down Hillsborough Street and be like ‘Wow, this is so cool.'”

He said participation from students is important because when the current students become alumni, they want to come back to see their school later in life and be proud of it.

“I’ve been involved in this since the beginning,” Chapman said. “I used to work for the City of Raleigh.”

The cleanup was supposed to take place last weekend, but due to weather conditions it was re-scheduled for Saturday. It was also postponed because the Hillsborough Hike is scheduled to take place on Friday.

“I think this year might be the first year that we’ve tried to follow the Hike and I think that’s a good thing to do,’ Chapman said.

Both Chapman and Jennings agreed the Cleanup has a lot to do with being environmentally conscious.

“It’s kind of tied into an Earth Day event, so we always try to plan it around Earth Day,” Jennings said.

Various groups and organizations are helping in the event, including the University, the City of Raleigh, various businesses, the University Park Association and the Campiegne Park Association.

“One of the goals of the partnership is to make Hillsborough Street Raleigh’s green street. We want to promote consciousness of the environment,” Chapman said.