Mayor Eric Adams is taking aim at New York’s painful shortage of public bathrooms, announcing a plan on Tuesday that would build 46 new restrooms and renovate 36 existing facilities over the next five years. But the plan could run up against an obstacle that has foiled prior mayors: the city’s costly capital process.
City Hall is partnering with the Parks Department on the initiative, punnily dubbed “Ur In Luck.” The administration has set aside $150 million for the new construction, Parks Commissioner Sue Donoghue said during a press conference at a Harlem playground.
But officials only briefly acknowledged that public bathroom projects are infamous for their steep cost. As of 2022, in-progress Parks Department restrooms were reportedly costing an average of $3.6 million each. Right now, the city’s ongoing projects include a bathroom rebuild in Corona, Queens slated to cost $9 million and take five years to complete, and a just-completed bathroom in East Flatbush that cost $7.8 million.
“The obstacles have always been the capital process and the cost,” said Adam Ganser, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks.
Donoghue did say that six of the new restrooms would be built using design-build, a tactic that can help projects get done more quickly and cheaply by merging the design and construction phases. Officials also pointed to the Adams administration’s separate effort to persuade state lawmakers to loosen the city’s capital process rules, which could streamline construction — but it’s unclear whether those reforms will pass in the remaining few days of the Albany session.
Another three planned restrooms would be built through public-private partnerships, rather than by the city alone, Donoghue said. The new and refurbished restrooms would include 28 in Manhattan, 23 in Brooklyn, 10 in the Bronx, 14 in Queens and seven on Staten Island — joining some 1,000 that already exist in the city, a number that is widely considered inadequate.
Officials announced no plans to change the five levels of review that each new public restroom must face, which includes scrutiny by the local community board, City Council member, the council speaker, the mayor and the public design commission.
Donoghue insisted the plan would not be affected by the mayor’s planned cuts to the Parks Department’s budget, which is slated to fall by $55 million next year to a total of $582 million unless the City Council reverses this in upcoming budget negotiations. The department’s capital budget, which covers construction projects, is slated to fall by about 1% to $55 million.
“These capital announcements are great, but unless they’re bolstered by the necessary maintenance and operations funding, we’re going to see this as part of the same cycle we’ve seen year after year after year,” said Ganser, whose organization has pushed Adams to follow through on a campaign pledge to increase Parks Department funding.
Indeed, past mayors have made their own bathroom promises, with mixed results. Mayor David Dinkins’ 1990 promise to build 20 public toilets went nowhere, and Rudy Giuliani ran into problems a few years later when his administration failed to find a vendor.
A 2006 pledge by Michael Bloomberg to build 20 automatic public toilets around the city stalled in the ensuing years, with just five built by 2022 due to technical challenges, Crain’s reported.
In April, a report by the state comptroller found that New York City’s major capital projects remained chronically delayed and mostly over-budget, amounting to about $55 billion in extra spending each year. The report also faulted the Adams administration for infrequently updating the online dashboard that was supposed to bring transparency to the murky process.
Nick Garber , 2024-06-04 20:10:13
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