Mayor: I’d use that loo
THE Gold Coast Central Chamber of Commerce is urging council to “quickly” fix new open-air urinals in Surfers Paradise, but the Mayor says he’d use it as it is.
Chamber president Martin Hall let fly yesterday at the Gold Coast City Council for overseeing installation of a $400,000 public toilet which he says has “come up short of what was promised”.
He also challenged Mayor Tom Tate to say whether he would be prepared to have a crack at the open-air urinal: “We would like to hear if Mayor Tate would use this new facility in its current format. If not, he should fix them.
“There is a major difference between what was shown to traders during the design phase and what has been built. The city and its toilets are now the butt of jokes throughout Australia.
“The way they have been built creates an unsightly, unwanted sideshow in the heart of one of Australia’s major tourism strips. It is not a good look and the council needs to come to grips with the problem quickly,” he said.
Mr Hall said the idea of a pop-up toilet itself was clever and a good use of space but the lack of privacy was “disappointing”. The toilet, operational from 11pm to 4am in the heart of nightclub strip Orchid Avenue, has two open-air urinals with small slat fencing which does nothing to shield passers-by from men peeing.
On Saturday — its second night of operation — the first three male users avoided both open-air urinals and used the solitary enclosed female cubicle instead.
A council spokesman said Mayor Tate said he would use the urinal in its current state and it had collected 530 litres of urine in its first 24 hours.
“That is 530 litres not being left in alleyways and on shop fronts,” the spokesman said.
Larger glass screens in concept drawings were “only artists’ impressions, not part of the actual design”.
The council has conceded it will “consider” more privacy screening.
But Mr Hall is adamant it must be improved: “The fence around the toilets has come up short and left the city exposed to ridicule.
“If they had been built as planned they would have at least alleviated the need for more bathrooms in our main entertainment district.”
Traders, Surfers Paradise MP John-Paul Langbroek and Federal Tourism Minister Steve Ciobo have all panned the loo as “embarrassing” with the latter saying it had turned the streetscape into a toilet.
But the council has revealed it is looking at installing more of the hi-tech Netherlands designed dunnies around the city.
Mr Hall said any decision by council to install more should be preceded by public consultation.