TRENTON >> A collaborative effort to beautify this 7.5-square-mile capital city took shape this weekend as street sweepers polished roadways while volunteers spruced up a former hospital site.
“Everybody looks at Trenton as the dirty capital,” city resident Hafeez Abdullah said Saturday. “Today they can look at it as the clean capital. We got to give the capital a good name because Trenton makes, the world takes.”
Abdullah, 21, participated in a five-hour cleanup operation Saturday outside the former Mercer Medical Center. Other volunteers joined him on the 400 block of Bellevue Avenue, including Mayor Reed Gusciora.
“This place was a dump this morning,” Gusciora said of the vacant property. “Now it’s being transformed.”
When Gusciora got sworn into office July 1, he spoke about the need to beautify Trenton for a better future.
“This is a battle for safe and clean streets in our neighborhoods and better education for our children, jobs and economic development for our citizens, peace and security for our seniors,” he said in his inaugural speech. “It’s also about bringing back the pride and swagger that the capital city not only requires, but deserves.”
Gusciora and South Ward Councilman George Muschal earlier this month conceived of the plan to send five street sweepers up Trenton’s 2.5-mile stretch of Broad Street. The idea became a reality on Saturday morning when street-sweeping vehicles motioned up Broad, starting from the Trenton-Hamilton border and ending at the Battle Monument in the North Ward.
Brian Blakely, one of Gusciora’s biggest supporters, called Saturday’s cleanup “a beautiful thing.”
“This is something we haven’t seen for years in the City of Trenton,” Blakely said. “We can’t talk about alleyway illegal dumping if we don’t clean things up in plain sight. This is something that is important, something we have to do.”
One of the volunteers cleaning up the old hospital site was at-large Councilman Santiago Rodriguez, who suggested the city should levy steep fines against illegal dumpers. “We have to enforce the laws,” he said. “If we enforce the law, residents would feel empowered.”
Unkempt property
Rodriguez reminisced about the old days when Capital Health operated its Mercer Campus hospital on Bellevue Avenue, employing scores of people and keeping the property well-maintained. Those days became distant memories as Capital Health pulled the plug, ending Mercer Medical Center’s life in favor of developing and opening a new medical campus in Hopewell Township.
Capital Health sold its former Mercer Medical Center properties to Global Life Enterprises LLC in 2013, and Global Life sold those properties to 446 Bellevue LLC last year, according to deed records.
Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes pulled no punches on Saturday when he said 446 Bellevue LLC is responsible for the day-to-day maintenance of the former hospital it owns.
“People are supposed to keep up their property,” Hughes said as he watched volunteers cleaning up 446 Bellevue’s messy landscape. “The owner is out here. He should be keeping this place cleaned up. They should be held responsible.”
Hemant Mehta, the boss in charge of 446 Bellevue LLC, said he had traveled all the way from New York City to witness Saturday’s cleanup outside the blighted former hospital. “I’m excited to be part of this,” he told The Trentonian. “This new attitude (from the Gusciora administration) is very encouraging.”
Gusciora wore a blue T-shirt and hat both emblazoned with the message “We lift Trenton together” as he literally fell into the dirt while raking up leaves outside the former medical center Saturday morning.
Previously a proud facility that delivered babies and serviced the sick, now the dilapidated building is an eyesore that sustained structural damage from thieves stealing copper and water filling up in the basement, according to the mayor. “We are working with the owner,” Gusciora said. “The owner is committed to cleaning up the property.”
Mehta’s company has retained former Mercer County Executive Robert “Bob” Prunetti as a consultant to help push a redevelopment plan that aims to transform the rundown former hospital into a mixed-use property comprising healthcare, education and housing components.
Prunetti, who previously worked as CEO and president of the MIDJersey Chamber of Commerce, said he was “really happy” to see the cleanup initiative taking place Saturday.
Mercer County Correction Center inmates picked up trash and mowed down overgrown grass as part of Saturday’s cleanup on Bellevue Avenue. Other volunteers included former City Council candidate Elvin Montero and Mercer County Freeholder Anthony Verrelli, a Democrat who hopes to get appointed to Gusciora’s old Assembly seat.
Gusciora resigned from the New Jersey Legislature on June 30 to take over as Trenton’s new mayor. One of his biggest campaign promises was to make Trenton a safer, cleaner city.
Cleanup complaints
Crystal Feliciano, senior program director for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Mercer County, acknowledged that some people have been critical of Saturday’s cleanup initiative but said naysayers should “stop with the negative talk, and let’s start lifting this city together. That’s what this is about.”
At-large Councilman Jerell Blakeley earlier this month called the cleanup initiative a “gimmick” and a “scam.”
A city resident named Shuhao Chen sent an email Saturday afternoon to city officials and the press corps complaining about the initiative’s costly impact on car owners who had their vehicles towed.
The city on Wednesday issued a news release announcing the Trenton Police Department would “post a notice for parking restrictions to make possible widespread street sweeping on Saturday.” But Chen said the city did a poor job notifying the public about the parking restrictions.
“I am not sure when this initiative was put in place, but I want to say that a lot of residents did not see it coming,” Chen said. “It felt like those notices were put up a day before. Thanks to the mishandling of this ‘initiative’ I am sure it has impacted many residents’ everyday life as well as hitting them hard financially.”
Saturday’s cleanup was not a magic-bullet solution to Trenton’s illegal dumping problem. “This is a start,” Gusciora said of the initiative, “and we have to work on the alleyways in the Wilbur section and we want to go after the illegal dumpers and impose maximum penalties so more people could take pride in the city.”
City resident Glenn Gilliam, 35, of Martin Luther King Boulevard, participated in the cleanup on Bellevue Avenue. “We’ve got to do this because it’s a long time in the making,” he said. “It’s finally being done. We just gotta live right and do right.”
Gilliam then glanced over at Gusciora and watched the mayor raking up leaves from the landscape. “We gotta clean it up one by one,” he said. “Even the mayor is doing something.”