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Canucks can't get enough of the Portland Loo.
The City of Portland has sold its third patented stainless steel, open-air public toilet to another town. This time it's Nanaimo, British Columbia—a city known for its bar district and bathtub-boat racing on Vancouver Island.
The sale price is $90,750, according to officials at the city's Bureau of Environmental Services, which manages the Loo.
That's a profit over the $60,000 cost of manufacturing the toilet—and the bureau plans to use that revenue to fund the cost of twice-daily cleaning for Portland's six Loos.
"They want to put their Loo in by the end of June," says Anne Peterson, Loo program coordinator for the sewer bureau. "They want to open in time for their summer season."
The Portland Loo was launched in part to solve concerns about a lack of public toilets for the city's homeless population. But they've been purchased by other cities in the Pacific Northwest chiefly as an addition to tourist districts.
The sale to Nanaimo comes three months after Portland sold a Loo to Ketchikan, Alaska, and one year after the first toilet the City of Portland sold—to Victoria, British Columbia—was voted "Canada's Best Restroom."
WW reported in February that documents obtained in a lawsuit against the city show analysts for the Portland Water Bureau (which used to manage the Loos) used city email to drum up a social-media campaign soliciting votes in the contest.
WWeek 2015