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Costs and plans for park bathroom renovations

3:39:09

·

132 sec

Council Member Brewer raises concerns about the high costs of bathroom renovations in parks, with some projects costing up to $13 million. Commissioner Donoghue discusses efforts to reduce costs and improve bathroom facilities across the city.

  • The average cost of a bathroom renovation is about $3.5 million, with some costing more due to utility lines, elevation, or accessibility issues
  • The Parks Department is exploring options like prefab buildings and trailers to reduce costs
  • A $150 million 'Better Bathrooms Initiative' will create 46 new bathrooms and renovate 36 existing ones
Gale A. Brewer
3:39:09
Bathrooms, I mean I know in the last hearing preliminary talked about, was it Oregon or Portland or someplace like that?
3:39:17
Whatever.
3:39:18
But there's still a whole bunch of the ones that need renovation.
3:39:22
13,000,000, 5 million.
3:39:24
So do we have a plan for that?
3:39:26
I'm doing the best I can, but that's a lot of money for per bathroom.
3:39:30
How, what's the plan for that?
3:39:35
One bathroom is $13,000,000 in Riverside Park, yes.
3:39:41
Bathrooms
3:39:41
6,000,000, 9 million, 5 million?
3:39:43
Yeah.
3:40:20
In my case, they already exist.
3:40:22
They're and sometimes they're landmarked.
3:40:24
$13,000,000 is it.
3:40:26
Yep.
3:40:26
So I'm just saying where there are that kind of bathroom, I would love to have some discussion about what we can do.
3:40:32
We're all trying but
3:40:35
Got nothing less than 5.9.
Sue Donoghue
3:39:16
The Portland Lou, yes.
3:39:31
Yes, absolutely.
3:39:33
Are you saying that 13,000,000 per bathroom?
3:39:38
So that's an exceptional that's a rare occurrence.
3:39:41
At
3:39:44
Our average price of a bathroom is running about 3,500,000.0.
3:39:48
There are cases where either because of the utility lines or because of need to elevate or accessibility issues, they can be more expensive, absolutely.
3:39:58
But we have done a number of things to look at bringing down the prices of bathrooms.
3:40:02
You referenced the Portland Lou.
3:40:04
The reason why we've explored other options like that is specifically to bring down the price of our bathroom.
3:40:11
So we've looked at things like prefab buildings, trailers, a number of different options so that to bring down the price and be able to do it more quickly.
3:40:33
Absolutely.
3:40:37
Yes.
3:40:37
Well, within this year we announced a better bathrooms initiative, 150,000,000 that's going to renovating a huge number of restrooms.
3:40:49
It's creating I have the numbers 46 new ones and renovating 36, almost 100 new bathrooms that we're doing with funding that was allocated by the mayor's office.
3:41:01
So, the Parks Department maintains the largest number of public bathrooms in the city.
3:41:08
Huge, huge responsibility that we take seriously.
3:41:11
Over 600 public bathrooms.
3:41:13
And as I said, we have received funding and are going to be renovating or building an enormous number of new ones.
Mercedes Narcisse
3:39:22
Yeah.
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