Pee-Town Revisited

[January 30th, 2008]

The temperature was just above freezing at 5:41 am on Christmas Day, when one anonymous man went inside 1221 SW 4th Ave. to use the facilities.

He was the only user that night—typical of the wee hours at City Hall. Throughout December, the most recent full month, an average of one person a night—sometimes zero, and never more than three—took advantage of the late-night public pisser, according to a City Hall log of users.

The conversion last summer of City Hall into an option for late-night relief aimed to help homeless people (See “Pee-Town,” WW , Aug. 8, 2007). So far, keeping that City Hall toilet open from 11 pm to 7 am cost the city $46,500 in its first five months. Mayor Tom Potter has budgeted another $75,000 to keep City Hall’s first-floor bathrooms open overnight through the end of 2008. About 80 percent of that money pays for security guards.

If last month’s average holds, that would work out to the city spending $205 every day this year so one person can use the loo. That could buy coffee and a bagel at Bentos Coffee and Cookies, across from City Hall, for 50 people a day.

Commissioner Randy Leonard opposed the initial plan and still does, considering how little use City Hall bathrooms have gotten. He argues that City Hall is too far from the transient mecca of Old Town to be useful. So, getting into a bit of a pissing match, Leonard secured $250,000 to design, build and install two permanent stand-alone public restrooms downtown.

“My goal is to get these to where we’re spending 10 grand a pop,” Leonard says. “We can get it [patented] and sell it ourselves to other cities.”

The first new restroom should be installed by early summer. But it’s not just a matter of throwing up a port-a-potty.

Design will be key, because the toilets could be subject to the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, and other regulations. Other cities, like Seattle, have had disastrous experiments with public toilets. But “none of them involves Exeloo,” says Louis Herrera of Public Facilities and Services Inc., in Roswell, Ga., which distributes APTs, or Automated Public Toilets, made by Exeloo.

Early last December, while the rest of us were holiday shopping, Herrera and Exeloo East exec Doug Stoner, also a Democratic state senator in Georgia, came to Portland to pitch their commodes, which sell for about $250,000.

“It was amazing,” says Leonard of Stoner’s visit. “He walks in, gives me his State Senate card…then he hands me a brochure. I was thinking, ‘Oh, no you didn’t.’”

Leonard said no, that he would rather build his own toilets.

That smell on the sidewalk? It’s not urine. It’s

opportunity .