The graffiti-marred eyesore that can be seen by thousands of drivers of vehicles passing by daily on Interstate 84 is beginning to be cleaned up.

Hartford has hired Off the Wall Power Washing Specialists of Deep River, which began cleaning the paint off the ground level of 25 Sigourney St. on Friday, according to account manager Jesse Brissette.

“We hit the perimeter of the building and got everything we can hit on the ground,” Brissette said. “Because the town has actually stepped in, obviously, and they’re getting us access to the interior of the building so we could start on the roof up to those upper layers all over this next week.”

He said it will take two weeks to clean the entire building.

The owner of the 15-story vacant building near Interstate 84, Spartan Towers LLC, whose principal is Florida businessman Casey Askar, has been hit with $1,500-a-day fines for not securing the eyesore and not cleaning up the graffiti.

Built in the 1980s and then purchased by the state for office space, the building has been vacant for six years and sits near the Frog Hollow, Parkville and Asylum Hill neighborhoods.

Judith Rothschild, director of licenses and inspections for the city Development Services Development, said Off the Wall’s quote was the lowest of three submitted.

“The other two quotes required inclusion on the cost of scaffolding,” she said. “Off the Wall’s quote to the owner, according to the owner’s representatives, was much lower than the other two quotes because they did not require scaffolding to remove the graffiti. The other two did.

“So when the owner did not respond in accordance with the order timely, the city contacted Off the Wall and they provided us the quote, and we proceeded with them directly.”

She said the job will cost about $30,000, which will be billed to Spartan Towers. Askar did not return a request for comment.

“We’ve put together a kind of a custom-built device, which will hang over the wall of the roof to hit some of the top-level stuff,” Brissette said. “They’ve got those terraces, so we’ve got a pole that will reach up to 30-35 feet, pump spraying. It’s kind of a creative process, but we’re not going to be using any lift or scaffolding now.”

Brissette said Off the Wall, in business since 1985, has done work at Eastern Connecticut State University, ESPN, Johnson & Wales University, Park Place Towers, in New Haven and elsewhere in the state.

The graffiti removal isn’t the only issue with 25 Sigourney St., Rothschild said.

“People who were marking the building, tagging the building with graffiti, were certainly getting into the building to do so, particularly to do so at the upper level, so it is not the only thing that the city has gone forward on,” she said. “Under the building code and the fire safety code, orders to secure the building from trespass have issued as well.”

The city is paying for security to prevent access to the building 24 hours a day “to make sure it doesn’t get reopened, because so far the owners’ efforts at keeping the building secure have failed repeatedly.”

Rothschild said the city wants to see no more graffiti “but to prevent any other issues that can occur from illegal entry into the building, which has no fire-suppressant system active, no fire alarm system active and is a danger not only to persons who might get in but to responding personnel who might have to go there in the event of a fire or other emergency.”

She said the owners did make an effort to secure the building but it was not successful “in that they would board up and the next day there would be break-ins at more than one location, so they were not securing it enough,” she said.

“So if they would take over their responsibilities here, the city would certainly step off the property, but in the meanwhile we have to keep the building and the community around it safe,” Rothschild said.

She said the security costs also would be borne by the building’s owners.

“There is (blight) ordinance and state statute that allows us to recover those expenses, which we intend to implement, to recover all city costs on this property that is not ours to take care of at this point for public safety reasons,” Rothschild said.