Best Practices for Cleaning a Baseball Stadium

Cleaning a baseball stadium is a monumental task. After all, baseball stadiums are big. The largest, Oakland Coliseum in Oakland, CA, clocks in with 56,782 seats. But even the smallest, Progressive Field, in Cleveland, OH, holds a respectable 34,830.

That’s not to say that those 34,830 fans will act respectfully during the game. Some ticket holders control their mess (Japanese fans are famous for their fastidiousness). But they are the exception. Most spectators leave all kinds of trash, spills, and other unpleasant messes in their wake.

That leaves maintenance crews to attend to all those parking lots, risers, lobbies, stairwells, and restrooms. Stadium cleaning requires pregame preparation, game day attention, and quick post game turnaround. That’s a lot of mess to clean up all season long.

Use this stadium cleaning checklist to make the job easier.

Ballpark Cleaning: Trash Patrol

Trash removal is one of the hardest ballpark cleaning jobs. Fans leave all kinds of detritus under the seats and in the stands. Plastic cups, cardboard trays, half-eaten food, puddles of beer, and bodily fluids are common.

Gross? Yes, but the mess maintenance workers really hate dealing with is peanut shells. “The shells cling to the drains and have to be cleaned out twice,” according to Samuel Santos, a cleaning crew supervisor in Los Angeles Dodger Stadium in this article.

Some stadiums outfit crews with short brooms to sweep under the seats, others use a leaf blower to push the trash out to the aisle. Either way, trash must be moved to the lower levels and picked up with an industrial sweeper.

Crews can then hose down seats with a power washer or other specialized equipment. That same powerful equipment can also clean other areas of the baseball stadium like concourses, restrooms, and kitchen areas.

Stadium Cleaning: The Luxury Box

Whether you call it the luxury box, skybox, or club seating, cleaning these areas is a bit different. After all, an elevated ticket prices require an elevated level of maintenance.

These areas feature upgraded furnishings and materials. Luxury boxes most likely have separate elevators, lobbies, bars, and prep kitchens. They have lots of windows that need shining, carpet and tile that demand special equipment, and exclusive restrooms that require constant care.

(For a more detailed look at cleaning expectations check out this 2019 RFP for premium seating cleaning services at the Jacksonville State University Stadium.)

Expect maintenance crews to treat these exclusive areas like a like a high-end hospitality or retail environment. During the game that means removing trash and checking restrooms on schedule. Spills should also be attended to quickly but don’t break out the big, loud soil removal machinery just yet. Let the post-game crew handle that after the fans go home.

Cleaning Ballpark Restrooms

Stadium restrooms generate a lot of feelings, and a surprising number of news stories. There are articles about the second-worse restroom in Major League Baseball (it’s Boston’s Fenway Park). Stories about testing the soundness of the Texas Rangers’ new Globe Life Field restrooms by flushing all the 2,600 toilets and urinals at the same time. And this long treatise by ESPN that examines the disgusting specifics of stadium restroom maintenance in great detail.

This spotlight proves the public and stadium owners care very deeply about the restroom experience. Get these spaces off to a good start with a pre-game deep clean. Make sure staff:

• Spray every surface with disinfecting chemicals. That means walls, partitions, toilets, urinals, sinks, taps, and floors.
• Allow chemical to dwell according to directions.
• Agitate grout lines with a grout brush or other tool.
• Rinse every surface with clean, clear water.
• Dry surfaces

Deep cleaning stadium restrooms by hand would be a daunting, and disgusting, task. Spraying, wiping, scrubbing, and mopping takes a lot of time. To complete the job workers would have to bend, twist, crawl on dirty restrooms floors, and get really close to the mess.

There is a better, faster, more dignified way to deep clean restrooms. Try the No-Touch Restroom Cleaning® systems by Kaivac. These machines clean restrooms quickly, without bending, twisting, or touching messes. They include a powerful wet/dry vac that removes dirt and organic soils completely from the space.

Click here for more ideas on cleaning a baseball stadium.