Class For Your Ass -- Part II

Photos | Jim Herd

We know it costs $500,000 to build a public restroom in an S.F. park. But how much do other cities pay?

By Joe Eskenazi

Late last month in this space, we learned that half a million dollars could buy you a Midwestern mansion on a lot of 16,200-square-feet or 500-square-foot, prefabricated public restroom in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park.

You can read that article here.

Rose Marie Dennis, a spokeswoman for the city’s Recreation and Parks Department, explained to us that, in a big city, a $500,000 toilet was par for the course. “Call New York, call New York!” she implored. So I did. And Chicago. And Miami and Baltimore and Seattle and Denver and Los Angeles and San Diego and a host of other locales. And some of them even called back.

Having now asked more public restroom-related questions than even reporters covering Sen. Larry Craig, I can now answer the question “Is $500,000 a lot for a small public lavatory?” – and it’s a two-parter.

The common-sense answer is, “Good Lord yes! In a city crawling with poor and homeless people, it’s simply inconceivable!”

The well-researched answer is, “You know, San Francisco is paying quite a bit more than many other cities, but public restrooms are mind-blowingly expensive to build from sea to shining sea.”

And for only $500,000, this baby can be yours!

It’s little wonder, however, that Dennis implored me to call New York City. Compared to the price of a commode in The Big Apple, San Francisco’s pricey plumbing seems like a right bargain. In the land of $7 beers and $1,600 basement studios, an NYC Park and Rec official informed me that a restroom with three toilets and/or urinals on each side costs – hold your pinky to your mouth, Dr. Evil style – one MILLION dollars.

By the way, Trish Bertuccio, a spokeswoman for the New York City Park and Rec Department, informed me that $1 million is only the “base price.” If you wanted “no-touch sinks” or other extravagances, it’d be even more.

New York City pays top dollar for many of the same reasons San Francisco does. Pre-fab bathroom facilities are expensive and have to be transported in from out of state. They have to be assembled by union laborers earning high wages. The restroom designs have to meet approval from numerous committees (and, in a politically correct city, the companies building restrooms or restroom parts can’t do business with companies or nations boycotted by the purchasing town). Finally, installing plumbing and utilities can cost a fortune in and of itself. As the saying goes with government expenditures, a few hundred thousand here and a few hundred thousand there and soon, you’re talking about real money.

And yet, while virtually every engineer or planner I spoke with told me San Francisco’s $500,000 price tag “wasn’t out of line,” their cities usually spent less – way less.

John Regalado, the director of capital construction for Chicago’s parks district said the last facility his crews built was put up for between $200,000 and $210,000, and it was twice as big as the unit in Golden Gate Park’s panhandle.

Why the discrepancy? First of all, the pre-fab restroom itself ran around $80,000, which was around half what S.F. paid. Second, with 560 parks and 300 park buildings within Chicago city limits, Regalado has a fleet of workers handy for jobs like this. Third, Regalado eyeballed photos of the Panhandle restroom and noted that the stainless steel interiors, open-air barred doors and tile are custom features.

In Los Angeles, the average price of a four-stall restroom is $250,000. Denver, meanwhile, pays around $312,000 and that includes expenditures to “winterize” the facilities that San Francisco need not worry about.

San Diego’s last two restrooms, installed in 2005 and 2006, cost $220,000 and $221,000, respectively. Yet those were one-by-one facilities, half the size of San Francisco’s. On the other hand, according to Park and Rec Department Director Stacey LoMedico, the bids on a restroom twice the size of the City’s were in the $500,000 range.

Officials in Portland, Ore. said $500K wasn’t unreasonable – yet they usually manage to build their johns for half that cost.

All numbers aside, by now it’s handily apparent that building public restrooms, like competitive yachting, is not a sport for the marginally employed. Perhaps that’s why Seattle has instilled something of a moratorium on johns, building only one in the last eight years (and it cost $350K). Rather than build plumbed restrooms, Park and Rec spokeswoman Joelle Ligon told me it’s more cost-effective for Seattle to rent port-a-potties and replace them as needed.

And in Boston, Mike Vidaro of the city’s maintenance department told me they don’t even bother building public restrooms anymore. The only modern john in a city park he could think of was the “extremely outdated” facility at the visitor’s center in the Boston Commons. All the others are “field houses,” where city dwellers can relieve themselves in perhaps the same receptacles that once caught Paul Revere’s other run.

So, why does San Francisco pay so much? It comes down to a few reasons. More than other city dwellers, San Franciscans seem to feel the need to argue with the city over where a restroom ought to go, inducing time delays (and, as Einstein proved, time = money). With many of the city’s public restrooms being of a World War II vintage (some of them still bear the designation “Public Convenience Center”) replacing the plumbing is staggeringly expensive. And, for whatever reason, San Francisco sees fit to buy pre-fab restrooms that cost up to $150,000, which is more than twice what other cities (including Oakland) pay for theirs.

So, perhaps San Francisco officials ought to think about that the next time they bolt the stall door.