Restrooms inside public buildings
In principle, restrooms in public buildings are public restrooms. Those at Portland State University are often open to all during the hours the university operates. The university toilets serve the South Park Blocks, which have no toilets of their own. The presence of toilets maintained by the University means that the weekends-only Portland Farmers’ Market does not need portable sanitation units.
For many public buildings, however, opening toilets to the public usually entails increased costs in security, particularly in the post 9/11 environment. Security checks at the Multnomah County Courthouse in Downtown Portland are fairly thorough and often cause long lines. In 2008 the City of Portland opened City Hall restrooms 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to fulfill a condition of the Safe Streets for Everyone Initiative. Additional guards were expensive and users balked at security procedures; this resulted in a high cost per use. When the Portland Loo was installed and the city met basic requirements, the City Hall experiment was discontinued.
Restrooms in parking garages
Two Portland parking garages have public restrooms in them. On SW Clay street between 4th and 5th Avenues in a parking structure is a bright orange titled restroom. The entrance to the restroom is opposite the full block park that is home to the Ira Keller Fountain. It is built into the Auditorium Parking Garage.
The contoured floors and the walls covered with bright orange tile are attractive and easy to pressure clean. On the women’s side of the compact facility are regular and accessible stalls with lockable partial doors, a washing area with a sink and hand dryer. The men’s side features a urinal and a toilet stall, both without doors, and a sink area. There is also a hydrant-type faucet for pressure washing and a closet for supplies. While easy, this facility’s primary drawback is its poor safety. Entrances to the women’s and men’s rooms are too close to one another and hidden out of view down a narrow, curving, ramped corridor leading from the street. There is no natural light.
In 2007 the city negotiated a lease with the Melvn Mark Companies for $1 a year and invested $20,000 to upgrade plumbing. Maintained by Downtown Clean and Safe, the facility is open from 8 am to 11 pm.
The heavily-used public toilet in the city-owned Smart Park at NW Naito and Davis is built into the parking garage where access can be observed by the parking attendant. It currently has longer hours than any other public toilet in the downtown area. It is open Mon-Wed from 7 am to 12 midnight and on Thurs-Sat from 7 am to 3 am. Sunday hours are 9 am to 10 pm but the toilet is closed Sundays from Christmas to March. It is maintained by the city’s Bureau of General Services and their contractor CleanScapes, a Seattle-based company that provides streetscape maintenance services to property owners, municipalities, and business improvement districts.
