Cost city thanks to $tench of red tape
why shouldn’t we?
“The porta-potties here are the nastiest things you’ve ever seen in your life,” Walker said. “People miss the hole. They stand and dump. All you can do is take a leak, but you have to hold your nose to do that.’’
The city Parks Department still needs to get several approvals itself, including from local community boards, to move ahead with the plan, which has been several years in the making.
The toilets’ manufacturer told The City that the company got an angry call from a Big Apple official in February 2022 demanding to know why they hadn’t provided any loos yet.
The company rep responded
that was because no one from the city had actually ordered them, the outlet reported.
Not even deluxe model
The portable potties were actually proposed as a cost-saving measure, considering a more elaborate, larger “comfort station’’ runs between $5 million and $10 million to build, The City said.
Mayor Bill de Blasio decried the situation in 2019, saying something “has to change’’ if it costs that much and takes so long to bring bathrooms to parks, according to the report.
The Parks rep added to The Post that the department “has taken several steps to reduce the
cost of new comfort stations including standardizing the design, eliminating costly materials, eliminating custom materials, limiting utility runs, and limiting landscaping work.”
“We also met with contractors directly to understand the issues that come up during construction that we might be able to solve for through our design process. We continue to explore alternative structures such as the Portland Loo and other pre-fabricated facilities,” the rep wrote.
The city parks set to get the new free-standing loos, ideally as soon as summer 2024, are: Thomas Jefferson Park; Brooklyn’s Irving Square Park in Bushwick; the Hoyt Playground in Astoria,
Queens; Joyce Kilmer Park near Yankee Stadium in The Bronx and Father Macris Park in Graniteville on Staten Island.
“We are installing Portland Loos in one park in each borough, in areas specifically chosen because they did not previously have bathrooms,’’ the Parks official wrote.
Meanwhile, residents near Tompkins Square Park in the East Village would likely welcome any help.
As The Post reported Saturday, people have been increasingly defecating and urinating around the park and between nearby cars after a broken pipe and malfunctioning boiler in the basement of the field house forced public restrooms to close in November.