Campustown merchants, students and members of the community will join together today to clean up their streets.

The Campustown Action Association, which consists of Campustown merchants, will sponsor the second-annual Campustown cleanup.

The cleanup will start at 5:30 p.m. and is expected to last an hour.

The focus areas of cleaning are the first and second blocks of Welch Avenue, just off of Lincoln Way. The main focus area is the clock tower at the intersection of Welch Avenue and Chamberlain Street.

Members of the association and community will begin their work by picking up trash and sweeping the sidewalks. Merchants will also be planting flowers around the lightpoles on Welch Avenue at the same time.

Scott Sackville, of Copyworks, was involved in the campus town clean-up last year.

“One of the main reasons [we do this] is to throw out a positive image of campus town to the rest of the community,” Sackville said.

He said making Campustown more attractive to the public would attract more people to shop in the area.

Sackville said the Campustown Action Association joins the merchants together to work toward the same positive goal.

Besides cleaning up Campustown, Sackville said, the Campustown Action Association has been working on a marketing campaign to promote the area to the surrounding community.

“Because students live so close to Campustown, they are more prone to shop there,” he said. “This campaign will be designed to attract the attention of members in the Ames area and surrounding communities.”