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Parks Dept. Unveils Tribeca Potty Plan
The roughly 300-square-foot, one-story structure would be located near the northwest corner of the park, between the community gardens and the stairs that lead from the park to Borough of Manhattan Community College. The building, with separate boys and girls rooms, would sport a “green” roof planted with hearty, drought-resistant flowers, and a curved brick facade adorned with climbing rose bushes. “We are trying to make it as appealing as possible,” said Bob Redmond, the Parks Department’s director of capital projects. Last month, Redmond and the building’s architect, Campbell Morrison, showed the plans to the Tribeca Committee of Community Board 1 and Friends of Washington Market Park’s board of directors. The CB1 committee unanimously approved the plan, which is supported by the Friends group. But when it came time for the full community board to vote on the resolution the next week, several gardeners who have plots near the proposed toilets spoke against it, and the board declined to vote. A trench for sewer lines will be dug from Greenwich Street to the toilet area, uprooting the gardens, most likely for the 2009 season at least. “If that kind of disruption occurs, the community gardens will be finished in the park,” Larry Wasser, the gardeners’ representative on the park’s board of directors, told CB1. “This is the one refuge for older citizens where children come rarely and tend to be better behaved when they do,” added Donald Jenner, a long-time community gardener. Eight of the 60 gardens, on the west end, will not be restored. But in a letter to the Parks Department, the Friends group is requesting eight additional plots on the eastern end, and asking that the gardeners have a say in the gardens’ restoration. “We’re trying to make a compromise, to make the situation work,” said Nelle Fortenberry, the park’s board president. The Parks Department had identified three possible locations for the toilets before settling on one next to the gardens. “We selected a site that would do the least amount of damage to the mature trees,” Redmond said. He added that an alternate location on the other side of the stairs to BMCC, favored by some gardeners, would mean bringing utilities from Chambers Street and would disturb the roots of several hardwoods. The bathrooms, long supported by the park’s board of directors, answer the needs of parents and caregivers who for years have complained of hauling multiple children up the stairs to the BMCC bathroom or to businesses on Greenwich Street or, worse, to the bushes. In 2003, some members of the park’s board became so annoyed by the situation that they posted signs asking caregivers to take children to bathrooms in BMCC—and threatened violators with $75 fines. (The Parks Department later determined that the rule was unenforceable.) At that time, the Parks Department estimated that the toilets would cost $500,000. Now the price is twice that, according to Redmond. Councilman Alan Gerson has pledged $650,000 towards the facility and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has said it would make up the difference. That price, which comes to more than $3,500 per square foot, raised eyebrows among members of CB1’s Tribeca Committee last month. “How come it’s so expensive?” asked board member Albert Capsouto. “That’s something I can’t explain,” replied Redmond. “Do you know what kind of a house I could build upstate for a million bucks?” Redmond went on to explain that it is costly to do work in the city, and that a job training program is built into capital construction grants from the LMDC. “When we use government money we have to spend it in certain prescribed ways,” he said. The community board is expected to take up the toilet issue again this month before sending a nonbinding resolution to the Parks Department. One enthusiastic supporter of bathrooms in the park is the board’s chair, Julie Menin. “I have to be honest,” said Menin, a mother of three young children who usually takes them up to the BMCC bathroom. “We don’t use the bushes, but we sometimes have little accidents going up the stairs.”
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