New York City has spent $5 million on installing five new stainless steel toilets at public parks. The staggering price seems unreasonable to many New Yorkers when the pods sell at a retail value of about $185,000.
Officials said the futuristic “Portland Loos,” first used in 2008 in Portland, Oregon, warranted the cost, as with “additional site-specific costs,” resulting from installation, including plumbing, electrical, and pavement work, each unit cost $1 million.
“This frustrates me,” Bushwick resident Tiv Adler told the New York Post at Irving Square Park in Brooklyn. “I wish we could reallocate that money to more resources for the public.”
The new toilets are part of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s 2024 “Ur in Luck” initiative, which aims to expand public bathroom access citywide. Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement, “We’re proud to be rolling out our new, sleek bathrooms across all five boroughs, which will ensure New Yorkers across our city can soak up more of the sun this summer with friends and loved ones without having to worrry about where to go when they have to go.”
The facilities have also been installed at the Joyce Kilmer Park in the Bronx, Thomas Jefferson Park in Manhattan, and Father Macris Park in Staten Island. Locations for the project were decided based on need, being installed in neighborhoods that lacked such facilities.
Many residents near the public parks worry about the lasting cleanliness of the facilities. Elise Verstraete, another resident of Bushwick, told the New York Post, “no one bathroom is ever that clean, plus with that amount of homeless people that trickle in here in the evening, I believe they close the park down at night so that might be a good preventative measure, but I don’t think that’s going to stop it.”
The Pods feature a baby changing station, anti-graffiti walls, and angled louvers for officials to monitor criminal activity. Additionally, the facilities can be connected to full utilities for year-round use and are ADA accessible. The new toilets are designed to last for decades if maintained properly, a defining factor for a City that lacks sufficient public bathroom facilities.
Despite concerns about cost and functionality, as Williamsburg resident Mike Graffiti put it bluntly, “I think public restrooms are a huge issue. Does a million sound a little steep? Yeah … there’s a lot of other factors that come into it, where it’s just expensive to do things in New York City because that’s how it is.”
