A park on Tucson’s south side is set to reopen Friday after being closed for maintenance, officials say.
Santa Rita Park, at East 22nd Street and South Fourth Avenue, was cleared late Wednesday of its large homeless population so workers could conduct its annual maintenance work on Thursday, said Andy Squire, a city spokesman.
Squire said that the entire maintenance crew of the city began work on the park, so that “it’s a quick strike.” The work was expected to be completed in time for the park to reopen Friday afternoon.
The work included cleaning the sidewalks and restrooms, re-edging the grass and painting tables and benches.
The tallest task: “De-littering” the park, Squire said.
“We do this at a lot of our different parks where we have to shut it down, the difference with Santa Rita is we have a lot of people who camp there during the day,” Squire said.
“We’ve been doing outreach for over two weeks to prep for this …. We got two people into detox (Thursday) and we have a couple others considering shelter, but of course, unfortunately the majority of folks we made contact with are not ready to make those decisions at this point.”
Felipe Alvarez, who frequently stays at the park, said through an interpreter Thursday that about 20 police officers arrived Wednesday night to remove people from the park.
