DCP’s Ambassador Team preserves beauty of Downtown Wilkes-Barre

This article has been shared from: The Times Leader | By Sam Zavada | szavada@timesleader.com

WILKES BARRE — The Diamond City Partnership’s Ambassador Team is in place to provide a sense of cleanliness, comfortability and attractiveness to the Downtown Wilkes-Barre Business Improvement District (BID). Dressed in fluorescent orange while roaming the streets — seven days a week — the Ambassadors have made themselves known downtown.

“We’re there to really help build a sense of friendliness and vibrance for the community,” said Jeff Mead, the Ambassador Team’s leader and the Diamond City Partnership’s operations manager.

Mead’s crew, originally called “the Clean Team,” is responsible for a number of beautifying tasks, including sticker removal, cleaning up trash and graffiti, installing and maintaining baskets of flowers and shoveling snow. More recently, the team has emphasized community outreach, whether that be helping a person in need find a helpful service or offering a simple greeting as someone arrives at the James F. Conahan Intermodal Transportation Center.

The team performs its tasks within the BID, a 232-acre stretch of Downtown Wilkes-Barre that includes more than 300 property owners and 4,000 residents. The BID itself is both a collective of property owners and a geographic rectangle, contained by North, River and Academy streets and Pennsylvania Avenue.

The BID’s borders encompass many of Wilkes-Barre’s most crowded attractions, which also makes it the Wyoming Valley’s most pedestrian-heavy area. Because of this, the work done by the ambassadors is crucial. They tie together what might otherwise devolve into a disjointed experience for those who live, work and visit Downtown Wilkes-Barre.

“It’s important that people are able to get around on foot, and that they see that they’re in an environment that’s beautiful,” said Larry Newman, who serves as executive director for both the DCP and the BID. “One of the purposes of a BID is to allow a group of property owners and business owners — all of whom are independent — to work collaboratively together and in concert.”

Within the BID

The property owners that pay into the BID each bring their own thoughts and concerns to the table. For instance, a resident may have different priorities than a large business. In either case, the paying members of the BID want to see their investment appear in the look and feel of Downtown Wilkes-Barre.

“We take very seriously our responsibility to [the BID property owners], to provide them with a return on their investment,” said Newman. “It’s an investment in creating a downtown with an improved level of economic vitality and an improved level of quality of place.”

According to Newman, much of the work being done by the Ambassador Team is meant to reverse the effects of the so-called “broken windows theory,” which, in part, suggests that visible signs of decay in an area will breed further decay in that same area.

Regardless of that specific theory’s viability, the BID’s aesthetic improvements, brought on by the Ambassador Team, are perceived as an upgrade in the area’s general condition.

“That’s what this is all about. It’s about tending to the broken windows. It’s about tending to the quality of the place, and raising the level of quality of the place — systematically, over time, day in and day out — to create a place where people understand that this is a managed place,” Newman said.

The Clean Team

At the end of 2024, the DCP shared statistics that show the Ambassador Team’s work is making a difference. In 2024, they were responsible for the following improvements:

• 410 bills/stickers removed.
• 12,333 sidewalk clean-ups.
• 15,972 pounds of trash removed.
• 78 forms of graffiti removed.
• 483 ground planters watered.
• 3,222 hanging baskets watered.
• 39 human hazardous wastes cleaned.
• 387 pet hazardous wastes cleaned.
• 33 needle pick-ups.
• 269 hours of snow removal.
• 219 hours of weed abatement.

Through the Ambassador Team’s comprehensive software, Mead is able to keep track of everything his team does throughout the day to beautify the community. While some clean-ups are random based on the way the wind may blow on a given day, other areas do require a bit more attention. In a heat map showing the clean-ups across the BID, Public Square and Main Street are the areas that receive the most concentrated attention as far as clean-up services.

“I don’t think it should surprise anyone that the highest concentration of work is done in the highest traffic areas,” Newman said, adding that every portion of the BID is looked over every day multiple times.

The Ambassador Team is split into a number of subsections within the BID, allowing them to pay closer attention to each property. For their part, the individual team members have fully bought in to making sure Downtown Wilkes-Barre is as clean and welcoming as possible.

“It’s a hard job to do, and not everybody wants to do it,” Mead said of his team. “These guys are really great guys, and they take pride in it.”

A post-pandemic world

The COVID-19 pandemic had a great impact on the DCP’s vision for the BID’s future. Downtown Wilkes-Barre was hit especially hard during that time, and the past three or four years of recovery have been somewhat slow.

“We went from having around 11,000 people working within the boundaries of our 232 acres on an average weekday to having a little over half of that,” Newman explained. In exact numbers, 2024 saw only 57% of 2019’s total number of employee visits to the downtown area.

Despite the statistics, the Ambassador Team has remained committed to beautifying the BID. The DCP received relief funding from Luzerne County Council, which they used to redouble their efforts and expand the team.

Good neighbors

Newman said that increasing homelessness in the Wyoming Valley is a “regional issue,” but the impacts are more heavily felt in the BID.

“The reality is that downtown is bearing a disproportionate share of the burden for the region in caring for and providing services to at-risk populations,” Newman said. “That is a reality. We are the neighborhood that everyone expects is going to pick up the slack when there are more homeless folks, or where there are folks who are struggling personally and find themselves on the street. The services that meet those needs — most of them — are located in and around downtown.”

This is where the outreach component of the Ambassador Team comes into play. One member of the team’s distinct responsibility is to build a rapport with those in need and connect them to the appropriate services. While not everyone approached in this manner is receptive, the overall results have been encouraging. In 2024, the outreach-based employee logged 896 separate instances of assistance.

The City of Wilkes-Barre is a collaborator in helping the DCP and the BID remain successful, but there’s only so much city and county government can legally do.

“Our team really confines itself to the areas that are the responsibility of the businesses and property owners to maintain,” Newman said. He added that the city and county largely maintain areas like Public Square and the River Common, which otherwise would fall in the BID’s territory.

Newman said that the DCP, as a nonprofit, is more equipped to serve as an agent of incremental change and a complement to city government’s more sweeping measures.

“We supplement and deal with what are ultimately the responsibilities of the property and business owners within our district,” Newman said.

Among the public, the people in the fluorescent orange are hearing good things. As time goes on, and their presence becomes clearer, the Ambassador Team’s contributions are getting the praise they deserve.

“I love hearing people say, ‘Oh, you’re doing such a great job,’” Mead said. “Every week, it’s more and more now. We really know we’re getting the job done that we set out to do.”