Oakland’s historic
Town Hall is the only public building with restrooms and running water on a busy stretch of the West Orange Trail. But that could change.
Oakland’s historic Town Hall, the only public building with restrooms and running water on a busy stretch of the West Orange Trail, has become such a popular bathroom pit stop that officials taped a “No Public Restrooms” notice to the front door.
People still stop in, of course, but the sign is intended to encourage them to go elsewhere.
Attracting an estimated 1.2 million people a year, the 22-mile recreational trail can bring a big crowd into the little town and its air-conditioned government center, which also boasts a chilled drinking fountain in the lobby.
A proposal to build public restrooms as part of a 3,000-square-foot art and history center for which the town recently secured a million-dollar construction loan offers the prospect of relief for cyclists, runners and others who exercise on the trail.
But for now, Town Hall’s restrooms are small and often occupied during weekday work hours.
On weekends and nights, it’s locked up.
Orange County Commissioner Betsy Vanderley, who lives a short jog from the trail in Oakland, heard the pleas of trail-users walking, running and biking through town, where her late father, Jon, served as mayor from 1998 to 2004 and where a park on Gulley Avenue bears his name.
“Right now there’s no restroom in the town of Oakland to serve them, so they’re constantly knocking on the door of Town Hall trying to use the restroom there,” she told fellow commissioners last month.
Vanderley proposed the county pledge $182,000 to build public restrooms, which Orange County’s parks staff would maintain. The restrooms would be open even when Town Hall is closed.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs said before the commis-
Orange County Commissioner Betsy Vanderley proposed the county pledge $182,000 to build public restrooms.
sion unanimously approved a budget amendment for the restroom project, although the final vote on the budget will be next month.
The art and history center, expected to be completed next year, will sit on a half acre of townowned land on Tubbs Street, formerly the location of the “little white house,” which the town dressed up during the holidays.
Partly funded with tourist-tax dollars, the $1.2 million center will have a covered front porch and an air-conditioned art gallery.
Town leaders say they won’t use property-tax revenue to build the center, but will pay back the construction loan with impact fees and “a lot of fund-raising.”
They envision the center as a meeting place that will tell the unusual history of the little town, population 3,000.
More than a century ago, it was a Central Florida commerce center, where two small but bustling railroads carried vegetables and citrus to the nation.
Its first mayor was a Russian immigrant who had preferred the name “St. Petersburg” in honor of his birthplace, but the town was dubbed Oakland for its lush tree canopies.