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New York chooses first site for new public pay toilets

Generations of New Yorkers have mastered the act of nonchalantly slinking through restaurants and hotel lobbies where they have no business in search of a toilet. But the furtive quest for relief in public may become a fading art starting this summer, now that the city has settled on a site for the first of 20 long-awaited pay toilets.

After decades of fits and starts, the city will begin a two-year rollout of 25-cents-a-flush public toilets with the first being installed in Madison Square Park in June, said Kerry Gould, who is overseeing the project for the Department of Transportation.

The department hopes to have nine more pay toilets in use by the end of the year, with the second probably going to the Bronx, Gould said.

A Spanish company, Cemusa, will install the toilets as part of a contract to provide what is called street furniture, including 3,500 bus-stop shelters and 330 newsstands, throughout the city.

Cemusa agreed to pay the city about US$1.4 billion over 20 years, which it expects to recoup from selling advertising.

In exchange, Cemusa will collect the quarters that users deposit along with any revenue from the ads on the structures, some of which will be on sidewalks or traffic islands. Those put in parks will not carry advertising, Gould said.

The 20 automated toilets, which clean themselves after each use, will be enclosed in a closet-size structure. They are not expected, however, to satisfy the demand for pay toilets.

Gould said that the department had received suggestions of 50 sites for them from City Council members and community leaders. She said employees of the transportation department were scouting sites for the toilets, which require hookups to water mains and the sewer system.

"We are hoping to have them in every borough," Gould said, adding that the department would seek the approval of local community boards.

"We certainly want them in communities that welcome them," she said.

On Thursday night, Community Board 5 passed a resolution approving the placement of the first toilet in the southeast corner of Madison Square Park.

It will be near the Shake Shack, a popular food stand (closed for the winter), which draws big crowds.

Madison Square Park, which is on the north side of 23rd Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues, has drawn more crowds since it was renovated in 2001, said Stewart Desmond, spokesman for Madison Square Conservancy, a public-private partnership that maintains the park.
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