Harvard maintenance cleans Yankee Stadium in under an hour

Real Estate Weekly, Oct 30, 2002

Talk about your monumental tasks! When the New York Yankees recently scheduled a day-night doubleheader against the Baltimore Orioles on Sept. 10, getting Yankee Stadium back into game condition while moving one crowd out and another crowd in presented a logistical nightmare. Complicating matters was that both games featured special promotions, insuring early arriving fans eager to claim limited edition Paul O'Neill bubblehead dolls and 100th Season commemorative key rings.

As they have for the past seven seasons, the Yankees once again turned to Harvard Maintenance with the task of cleaning the Stadium's 55,000 seats, miles of ramps and corridors, and hundreds of restrooms--only this time there was a catch--the job had to be done in under an hour!

After an average regular season game, Harvard's team of 150 "sweepers and pickers" would take about eight hours to comb the Stadium top to bottom, collecting from 10 to 12 tons of refuse left in the stands and corridors by fans. It is a truly specialized task that requires a unique synchronicity of effort.

Harvard Maintenance's reputation for excellence in this field recently won the company the contracts for Shea Stadium in Queens, as well as the New York Mets' Minor League franchise, the Brooklyn Cyclones, at the brand new Keyspan Park in Coney Island.

While cleaning the stadiums on an accelerated schedule between games of a doubleheader is not a new task for Harvarrd, the one-hour timeframe did present a new challenge. Their previous record for the job was an hour and 45 minutes, making Yankee Stadium the only sports arena in the country able to be completely restored to pre-game status within this time frame.

Harvard employed an additional 250 workers to tackle the job, and the Yankees cleared a special section in the bleachers so the maintenance staff could be ready to begin the job as soon as the last fan left the Stadium. Remarkably, Harvard was able to shave nearly an hour off their previous best time, allowing the gates to be re-opened for the 7 p.m. second game by 5:30 p.m.

"Most companies would squirm at the thought of tackling their biggest project within such a rigid time frame," said Harvard president Stan Doobin. "However, Harvard perceives such challenges as opportunities to draw on our innovative approach and continue to set new standards for other maintenance companies to follow."

Harvard's home run between games may or may not have inspired the Bronx Bombers, who completed their four-game "sweep" of the Baltimore Orioles with a 3-1 victory in the second game.