SEATTLE — The countdown is on to next month's MLB All-Star game, which will bring week-long festivities with thousands of baseball fans descending on Seattle.
But before they show up, people who call Seattle home will be rolling up their sleeves to tidy up the city.
On Friday morning, hundreds of volunteers will gather outside T-Mobile park to kick off a community clean-up event hosted by The Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, Together Washington, and the Seattle Mariners among others.
Seattle could see 100,000 visitors during All-Star Week and generate $50 million in economic activity, according to the Washington Association of Business.
With those kinds of numbers, the goal for the clean-up effort is to pick up litter, remove graffiti, and some landscaping.
Despite the effort, crime is still up in Seattle. In the SoDo neighborhood alone, there were 1,063 incidents of violent crime and 307 this year as of May 31, according to Seattle Police.
Still Rachel Smith, the President and CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, says big events like the All-Star Game are a way to bring people together, and that's worth celebrating.
"We want to encourage people to be buoyed by the good things that we're seeing and continue to hold leaders accountable and make sure that we make even more progress and that we make it more urgently," said Smith, who commended city efforts like recruiting new police officers and the crisis care levy recently passed in King County.
More than 400 volunteers had signed up as of Thursday afternoon to join the community clean up.
Those volunteers will be split among four areas expected to see high numbers of foot traffic in July, including SoDo, Pioneer Square, Chinatown International-District and the Waterfront.
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