Washington Post - Contrast In Cleanup Underfoot In District

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Contrast In Cleanup Underfoot In District

Gum on Sidewalks May Hinder Revival

By Craig Timberg

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, November 28, 2003; Page B01

Walk north out of downtown Washington and something unsavory happens underfoot. Black splotches, some nearly as old as the cracked sidewalks themselves, appear denser and denser with each passing step.

You have crossed the Gum Line.

On one side, aggressive and well-funded business groups keep the sidewalks scoured using the latest equipment, with the stated goal of making them as spotless as Disney World's. On the other, an overburdened city government throws up its hands at the seeming impossibility of taking on yet another task.

"People shouldn't spit gum on sidewalks," said D.C. Public Works Director Leslie Hotaling. "I wish people would just keep it in their damn mouths."

The problem is more than aesthetic. Washington's renaissance under Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) has been powerful but uneven, say residents, community activists and merchants.

They contend that cleanliness equals safety in the minds of visitors, and that old gum -- along with graffiti and window bars -- subtly dissuades shoppers, tourists and even potential residents and commercial investors. The gum, in other words, hinders the improvement of neighborhoods, slowing the revival even of ones that are seeing major new investment.

Downtown gleams. Capitol Hill is increasingly quaint. But a few blocks north, H Street NE often is strewn with garbage and beer cans. Georgia Avenue NW looks dingy despite the growing affluence of surrounding neighborhoods. And even on 14th Street NW, which is stirring to life north of downtown decades after the riots chased away businesses, the gum splotches are an unwelcome reminder of a troubled past.

Moving from a transitional neighborhood, such as along 14th Street, to an enduringly healthy one will require removing the visual cues that can deter visitors, experts on urban retailing say.

"You don't want to lose what makes a city a city," said Valecia Crisafulli of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Main Street Center. But, she added, "What's important to do is not cross that fine line and look shabby, unkempt or, worse, even unsafe."

Retail consultant Robert Gibbs says shoppers form impressions within seconds, based on factors such as lighting and cleanliness. A sidewalk made splotchy by gum is just one of the signals that turns off visitors, dimming their perception of merchandise on sale there, he says.

"It's very subliminal," Gibbs said.

Even store executives, who are increasingly eager to tap urban markets, have similar reactions when they scout possible locations, he says. "A lot of time, they won't even get out of the car because there's garbage on the streets, there's graffiti," he said.

One resident near 14th Street, community activist Ramona I. Bowden, grew so frustrated that she wrote a letter to the mayor last month, demanding an investigation.

"The city streets are spattered with unsightly and unhealthy gobs of chewing gum, which become ugly DIRTY black spots," Bowden wrote. "This makes the Nation's Capitol City look like a third world country."

Gum is a mixture of base, sweetener, softener and flavorings. It is the base, which historically was made with natural resins, that makes gum sticky. Once it hits a sidewalk, gum adheres to the concrete and begins collecting dirt. It quickly stops being a hazard to passing shoes but becomes almost entirely black, hard and impervious to rain, wind, sun, snow, ice.

"It looks terrible. It really does," said Addie Green, owner of the Islander Caribbean Restaurant & Lounge on resurgent U Street in Northwest Washington. "It's all over the city. . . . Once you notice it, you can't help but keep looking."

The stubborn splotches, which pervade commercial areas throughout the city, are most common near bus stops and Metro stations, as well as outside eateries, bars and other places where chewers routinely dispose of their gum.

In few places is the problem as bad as in Adams Morgan, which maintains a whiff of seediness despite a booming club scene and rising housing values.

"People have an image of Adams Morgan that we're dangerous, that's it's messy," said Constantine Stavropoulos, who owns a coffee shop and diner there and heads the Adams Morgan Business and Professional Association.

He isn't suggesting that a neighborhood cherished for its funky vibe should go sterile. But Stavropoulos says removing the gum would help broaden the appeal of an area already popular among the weekend bar crowd.

"We want clean character," he said. "You can be an artist, you can be bohemian -- but take a shower every day."

Cities the world over face much the same problem. Nearly 1,000 workers teamed up last year to remove 600,000 wads of gum from Tiananmen Square in Beijing, news reports said. In Japan, gum manufacturer Lotte has its employees spend time scraping gum off Tokyo streets as a nod to environmental concerns, the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun reported.

And in Europe, a Dutch company has developed gum eradication machines, now popular in some cities on that continent, that use low-pressure steam and solvent. The machines, under the name GumBusters, have been used in the United States by business groups, universities and sports facilities. In Washington, the Downtown Business Improvement District owns two of the machines and has four workers to run them.

Crews started their first gum-removal blitz in April 2002 and cleaned up an estimated 300,000 pieces of gum by the time they finished the business district's 142 blocks a year later, said Frank Russo, a business district official.

Each piece of gum takes about seven seconds to remove once a worker puts the tip of the machine's wand on it. With the steam and solvent aimed at the splotch, it melts away, giving off a whiff of mint or fruit. A faint mark is left behind, but no more.

"We have probably the cleanest sidewalks in the United States, if not the world," Russo boasted, but he is not yet satisfied. He plans to have the gum crews eventually hit every downtown block three times a year.

Business improvement districts covering Capitol Hill, Georgetown and the so-called Golden Triangle south of Dupont Circle also have invested in various forms of gum removal, though less heavily. Gum also still mars some downtown blocks, particularly near bus stops and takeout joints, where it accumulates faster than Russo can get it cleaned up.

But it hardly compares with the rest of the city's commercial areas, which get gummier by the day.

A potential solution stops short of having city crews take on a costly new effort, the mayor says. He suggested that tax breaks could be created to encourage the formation of more business improvement districts.

Yet he bristles at the suggestion that gum on the sidewalks highlights inequity among neighborhoods or some shortcoming in services. "When I became mayor," he said, "we were talking about mattresses and sofas on the street."

Staff writer David Nakamura contributed to this article.