New arena to include gender-neutral bathrooms

The new Milwaukee Bucks arena will include 14 gender-neutral bathrooms, Senior Vice President Alex Lasry says.

It’s a step to make certain that “everyone feels welcome” at the $524 million arena, he said in an interview.

“For us, this is a no-brainer,” Lasry said. “We’re excited to be leading on this.”

The arena will have the one-toilet rooms throughout the building, including four on the main concourse and at least one on all other levels. They will be marked by “All Gender” signs.

There are also 18 men’s and 22 women’s conventional restrooms with hundreds of stalls and urinals throughout the arena.

“There are people who identify differently,” Lasry said. “Everyone deserves a chance to feel comfortable when they visit the arena and that includes when they use the bathroom.”

The Bucks want people of “all races, sexes and genders to feel like the arena is a place where they can feel welcome,” he said.

Lasry first made mention of the genderneutral restrooms in an exchange on Twitter Wednesday.

A follower asked about the bathrooms in response to an earlier announcement by the Bucks that they would not provide plastic straws at the new arena, part of a sustainability effort. The question seemed to have a sarcastic tone and Lasry responded firmly.

“You damn right we’ll have some gender neutral bathrooms,” Lasry said.

Lasry’s tweet has been liked more than 600 times as of Thursday morning. He said he was surprised and pleased by the overall reaction that the message stirred.

Lasry said gender-neutral bathrooms were the norm in public buildings in many U.S. cities and routinely found in other countries.

He said he recently visited a building in San Francisco that had a bank of genderneutral stalls for everyone to use and a common area for patrons to wash their hands.

“There was nothing weird about it at all,” he said. “I think this is where things are going to end up being” for public buildings in the future.

He said the gender-neutral bathrooms shouldn’t make anyone feel uncomfortable.

“It’s gender neutral. You don’t have to go into it if you don’t want to.”

Built with $250 million in public money, the new arena is expected to open in late summer.