Keep the Quarter Clean: A New Initiative
If you’ve ever been on your way to a nice dinner in the French Quarter and noticed a barrage of litter and graffiti, you’re not alone. Residents and businesses in this historic neighborhood noticed a significant reduction of these over the pandemic, but they came right back as things started opening up. Keep the Quarter Clean is a new campaign to help businesses and residents address sanitation issues and help prevent them moving forward.
Keep the Quarter Clean is a part of the French Quarter Management District (FQMD), which partners up with locals to focus on sanitation, public safety work, infrastructure, lighting, street cleaning, and all other maintenance issues. They were contacted by Keep Louisiana Beautiful, an affiliate of Keep America Beautiful to launch this important campaign.
“We really want to push a sense of ownership of cleanliness in the French Quarter,” says Karley Frankic, FQMD Executive Director. “This campaign has already been embraced by so many organizations and individuals, all of whom are tired of experiencing unsanitary conditions.”
FQMD created an informative one-page flier outlining laws related to garbage and animal waste, schedules for services and taxpayer-funded street cleaning, as well as information on how to report an issue. “We made it really easy for people to report sanitation concerns,” Frankic says. The flier includes a QR code, a direct phone number, and an email address. “Before, we weren’t hearing concerns, but now we are and are addressing them.”
Keep the Quarter Clean also aims to spread awareness and increase residential, business, and tourist involvement. They created bumper magnets and window decals, and informational cards to put in hotel rooms for tourists to easily read. They have membership meetings regularly. They also hope to work with the Young Leadership Council and the French Quarter Business Association in the very near future.
Moving forward, Keep the Quarter Clean plans to provide additional tools for vendors to help take care of cleanliness. “There’s a lot of concern over graffiti,” Frankic says. “We’re working on strategies to help remove any.” Some of the strategies include having two full-time employees to remove graffiti from public property, provide resources for tagged private property owners, including grant owners, and discussing the issue at livability-focused forums and meetings. The FQMD is also conducting a comprehensive survey of street lights, such as any needed installations or repairs, to help improve public safety.
“The French Quarter is the driver of tourism and hospitality,” Frankic says. “We want to make it as nice as possible. Plus,” she adds, “there are so many residents. We want everyone to be happy and healthy.”
To learn more about Keep the Quarter Clean or to request fliers, car magnets, or decals, visit their website at www.fqmd.org/KeeptheQuarterClean.