With more events, cleanup effort near San Francisco’s Moscone Center expands

By CBS Bay Area

Guillermo “Mo” Matos pressure washes the streets in the Yerba Buena neighborhood every single day, starting at 6 a.m.

“Right now, I’m grabbing the water hose. Going to connect it to our wand, and we’re about to get started pressure washing the block,” Matos told CBS News Bay Area. 

Matos has been pressure washing with the Yerba Buena Partnership for about 15 months. 

“I enjoy providing for my community,” he said. “I was born and raised here, and I was given so many nice opportunities, good schooling. I love this city taking care of me. It’s my time to pay it back.”

And now, he will get busier during his shift. The San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation, which helps fund the Yerba Buena Partnership’s Clean and Safe Team, announced it will be expanding its cleanup efforts. 

Currently, 55 ambassadors and cleanup members patrol near the Moscone Convention Center twice a month to power wash and sweep up litter and other debris. 

With the expansion, ambassadors will be out there five days a week. 

“I come out here, I clean, and business owners, they’ll stop and let me know that I did a good job and they appreciate it. It helps bring in customers,” Matos said. 

City leaders said they are seeing an uptick this year of nearly 60% more scheduled events at the Moscone Corridor compared to last year.

“So excited to be walking and sharing with you, all of the great activities happening in downtown San Francisco. We are supporting such activities like Clean and Safe, it’s so important that visitors to our cities, people who work and live in downtown really feel that it is a place for everyone,” Shola Olatoye, the CEO of the San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation, told CBS News Bay Area. 

Olatoye added that the additional cleanup has far-reaching impacts. 

“Crime is down 40%, we have convention bookings up 60%. I think people are recognizing that there is a real momentum here. Downtown is a place where people want to be. They want their businesses to be,” she said. 

According to the Downtown Development Corporation, the increased convention bookings represent over 659,000 hotel night bookings. 

The head of the Yerba Buena Partnership said the cleaning isn’t just for visitors. 

“We’ve seen 24 new small business, restaurants and bars open up. And we have 11,000 residents who live right here within the block of the convention center,” Scott Rowitz, the partnership’s executive director, told CBS News Bay Area. 

“They’re out here building amazing conditions,” he added. “We’re really proud of our amazing team of ambassadors and cleaners. We have 55 team members who are working every day to make this area amazing, clean, beautiful and vibrant.”

Leoni Patrick, the general manager of the Moscone Center, agreed. 

“Super optimistic, feeling very optimistic about the future. Dreamforce is always a fantastic event with us,” she said. 

“People who visit here are sometimes looking for something to wrong, and to be able to beautify the area is the first step. To me the most important step. Crime is down, and this is a very safe city, it’s an urban environment but it’s a very safe city,” Patrick added. 

Ambassadors like Matos are the force behind the beautification of the city of San Francisco. 

“People that have never been here, always hear bad things, whatever that may be. So, we’re just here proving them wrong and showing them how much of an amazing city it is,” Matos said. “It would be a lie to say that it’s always clean, but that’s what we’re here for. We’re here trying to get it cleaned.” 

Mayor Daniel Lurie also released a statement about the increase in cleaning efforts in the city. 

“When our streets are clean and safe, people visit our city, come downtown, and shop at our stores—and that’s what drives our comeback,” the mayor said. “Following the direction laid out in our Heart of the City plan, this increased power washing will ensure our downtown remains clean, welcoming, and vibrant. Thank you to our partners in the private sector and at the DDC for their work to bring back our downtown and our city.”