Loop ambassadors do the little things to make State Street more welcoming during the holidays

CHICAGO — Shoppers and tourists were bustling down State Street last week when a woman looking down at her phone stepped into a crosswalk. At the same time, a scooter rider with no intention of yielding barreled toward her.

Alfonso Redditt, an ambassador with the Chicago Loop Alliance, reached out his arm and called out a warning to the woman, who immediately took a step back, averting a collision.

As Loop foot traffic along State Street swells during the all-important shopping season between Black Friday and Christmas, alliance ambassadors will be on hand every day from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., performing all sorts of small — sometimes thankless — tasks to improve the experience of pedestrians.

“I love coming to work … making it safe and clean out here,” said Redditt, a 57-year-old who supervised the first shift of ambassadors last Tuesday.

Ambassadors, who wear neon green jackets that indicate they are there to help, patrol the busy stretch of State Street between Wacker and Ida B. Wells drives that features the Chicago Theatre, Macy’s and other iconic attractions. The ambassadors store their equipment in a garage on Couch Place, an alley infamous due to the tragic Iroquois Theatre fire in 1903.

The Chicago Loop Alliance, an organization that works to keep the Loop a “vibrant global business district,” can provide services like the ambassador program because it receives a portion of city taxes.

The ambassador program was launched in 2014, according to Octavion Thomas, who has been with the program since the beginning and now helps manage it. And while they both sport the same bright and welcoming garb, there are two kinds of ambassadors: members of the “clean team” and the “street team.” Thomas, 41, said the clean team was launched about three years after the street team.

Clean team ambassadors remove litter and empty garbage cans along State Street. While they can often be seen wielding a broom and a dustpan, clean team ambassadors must bring out a variety of tools depending on the season. In the fall, machines are used to remove leaves. During the worst days of winter, clean team ambassadors are out shoveling snow and spreading salt.

“You’ll need to double the (amount of workers) to maintain the snow out there,” Thomas added.

Clean team ambassadors also stay on top of the graffiti that tends to crop up on objects along the downtown sidewalk, such as poles and electrical boxes. According to a monthly ambassador report from August, the latest available report, clean team ambassadors “abated” 492 graffiti tags in August.

Thomas, who doesn’t think the Loop and State Street have completely recovered from the pandemic, said he is optimistic that a full recovery can be achieved because foot traffic is becoming more congested.

If the accumulation of trash on State Street is an indicator of pandemic recovery, recovery has been progressing smoothly over the past year or so. In August, clean team ambassadors removed about 16,000 pounds of trash. They removed about 10,000 pounds of trash in August 2023. In June 2023, ambassadors removed fewer than 5,000 pounds of trash. This June, they removed more than 13,000 pounds.

There are two shifts of ambassadors per day, and a shift is staffed by eight ambassadors, according to Thomas.

About half of the ambassadors who work a given shift are with the clean team, and the other half are with the street team, Thomas said.

Although ambassadors with the clean team can and do provide information to the public, street team ambassadors are tasked with much of the public-facing work.

Street team ambassadors greet everyone who walks down State Street: Loop residents, people headed to work, shoppers and tourists. They often provide directions and restaurant recommendations to tourists. Redditt said he tells folks to eat at nearby places such as Miller’s Pub, Atwood and Wilma’s Famous BBQ & Tavern.

Ambassadors with the street team also perform many check-ins with businesses on State Street to see if they have had any recent incidents that might not have warranted a call to the police. Thomas said the ambassadors have a large GroupMe chat with many of the businesses for discussing incidents. According to the August report, ambassadors completed nearly 900 check-ins that month.

Another large part of the job of street team ambassadors is checking in with members of the homeless community who frequent State Street. Ambassadors distribute pamphlets with information about social services and direct homeless people to the Harold Washington Library Center, where they can get help accessing services.

After years of working on State Street, Thomas has learned many members of the homeless community gravitate toward downtown because it’s more hospitable than the city’s other neighborhoods.

“Downtown is full of good, nice people — people who are not disrespecting them,” Thomas said. “You have a lot of people out here that give to them, give them food. People may go inside a restaurant and they give them food.”

Homeless people — just like the shoppers, tourists, street performers, theatergoers, commuters and everyone else — are integral to the fabric of downtown, Thomas said. They contribute to the energy felt on State Street during special times of the year, he added.

“It’s a really crowded day,” Thomas said last week over the sound of street performers’ drumming. “It’s holiday time. The spirit of the holidays just cranked in, just throughout the city in general. So we’re starting to see the influx of foot traffic, and you can feel the energy level.”