By Adam Andrzejewski for RealClearPolicy
The cost for a single public toilet in a 150-square-foot space for San Francisco’s Noe Valley Town Square just came in at an eye-watering $1.7 million — with a completion date set for 2025, according to The New York Post.
In contrast, New York’s iconic Empire State Building, the 1st 100+ story building, was built in one year and 45 days. Framing went up at four and half stories — a week.
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Not to be a party pooper but, come on San Francisco, you’re better than this. City officials seems to know it.
A celebration set at the site to hail final approval of the new public toilet was cancelled, with the assemblymember who secured the funds, Matt Haney (D-San Francisco), calling the final price tag “shockingly high” and “inexplicable” in the San Francisco Chronicle.
“I’m glad that Noe Valley will at some point get a bathroom, but it shouldn’t cost this much and it shouldn’t take this long, and I’m angry about it,” Haney told the Chronicle. “It’s not something I want to celebrate right now.”
Residents have asked for a toilet since the plaza opened in 2016, but no one expected a $1.7 million pricetag or its 2025 opening date.
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The Chronicle said, “the commode kerfuffle is just one recent example of a city bureaucracy so overly complicated and enamored of process that nothing seems to get done.”
In the Post, when asked to guess the cost, area builder Tom Hardiman of the Modular Building Institute said, “I’m going to guess high, I think, and say $200,000.”
When told of the $1.7 million price tag, 8.5 times higher than his estimate, he added, “It would be comical if it wasn’t so tragically flawed.”
A spokesperson for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department attributed the staggering price to “onerous demands and unpredictable costs levied by PG&E,” sky high construction costs that have increased 20-30 percent in two years, and high pay and benefits for workers, Fox News reported.
Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.
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