Hell's Kitchen Playground Spruced Up By New Cleanup Crew

HELL'S KITCHEN, NY — A newly launched city program inspired by the New Deal has spruced up a Hell's Kitchen playground to make the space more welcoming.

During the last week of July, the City Cleanup Corps spent five days rehabbing McCaffrey Playground, the small green space off Ninth Avenue between West 43rd and 44th streets.

Workers power-washed benches and picnic tables, removed litter and worked with in-house painters to repaint fences, railings, retaining walls and handball courts, the Parks Department said.

"More parkgoers of all ages were soon visiting and enjoying McCaffrey Playground thanks to these efforts," the agency said in a news release.

The Cleanup Corps launched in April, as Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to hire as many as 10,000 workers to tidy up the city. He pitched it as a way to create jobs and remove some of the graffiti and garbage that began to pile up during the pandemic.

Thus far, the Parks Department has hired 2,500 Corps workers. Their work is concentrated in 33 neighborhoods hit hard by the pandemic, focusing on areas identified by local residents, officials and business districts.

The name was inspired by the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the massive federal programs unleashed in the 1930s New Deal.