This $300K Self-Cleaning Toilet Could Be Coming To Prospect Park

WINDSOR TERRACE, BROOKLYN — Plans are in the works to bring a new self-cleaning toilet to Prospect Park South and local residents are pooh-poohing the project.

Department of Transportation plans to install an automated public toilet at Prospect Park Southwest and 16th Street were met by outrage from local residents at Community Board 7's transportation committee meeting Monday night.

DOT project manager Brandon Budelman fielded questions from a roomful of Windsor Terrace residents confused by the choice in location and the high cost of the bathroom.

"Is this addressing a specific problem," asked a local woman, "or just dumping it there?”

Several residents questioned why the department chose an isolated intersection with light pedestrian traffic instead of Bartel-Pritchard Square and worried that it would draw homeless people to the area.

Budelman explained that City Councilman Brad Lander had requested a public bathroom near Prospect Park and the proposed lot was one of few owned by the DOT. He added that the Prospect Park Alliance, the private nonprofit responsible for park management, had okayed the proposal.

Residents also balked at the estimated $300,000 it would take to install the toilet, which measures 6-foot 7-inches by 12-feet, and is designed to self-sanitize after each use.

“The unit is attractive," said Budelman, "and it cleans itself.”

The 25-cents-to-use facility would be the sixth of twenty automated public toilets owned by the city— bought for $175,000 a pop in 2006 from a company now owned by JCDecaux — that have proved difficult to unload.

The reason that so few of the toilets have been installed is that finding viable locations is "challenging," a DOT spokesperson told New York Magazine in 2016. The location must be above a sewage system, because the devices are without pumps, and a certain distance away from other city structures such as curbs and fire hydrants.

Getting the toilets installed near parks is especially difficult because it requires Parks Department approval, and Parks, as a rule, cannot approve the toilet's exterior advertising, according to New York Magazine.

"It would be nice to go to the bathroom in the park," said Budelman. "But we’re not the Parks Department."

One lone resident showed support for the proposal, noting she had used the Grand Army Plaza automated bathroom. "It was amazing," she said. "Like the bathroom of the future."

But when Community Board 7's transportation committee chairman Zachary Jasie told the buzzing crowd that committee members would discuss the proposal after the meeting, the crowd once again voiced its objections.

"Are you people trying to kill Windsor Terrace? Is that the goal? It’s not funny."

“It’s a lot of money for very few units.”

“I think a bathroom in the middle of the street is just odd.”

Photo courtesy of the Department of Transportation