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City to spend $900K on long-awaited playground bathroom renovations
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The comfort station has
been closed for the past quartercentury
due to a lack of water,
gas, sewer, and electric services
inside the structure, according
to Maher, who added that
those utilities lie outside the
playground and that the agency
did not secure funding until
recently to pay for the underground
construction required
to restore those services to
the building.
Parks Department spokeswoman
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added that Mayor de Blasio
allocated $650,000 to pay
for the project, and Borough
President Adams chipped
in $250,000.
The renovations will include
a pair of new toilets inside
the comfort station, along with
new doors, windows, interior
tiling, toilet partitions, sinks,
hand driers, baby changing tables,
and lighting and heating
systems, according to Ferguson.
Honchos hope construction
will begin by next spring,
and that the structure will open
for use next summer.
But even though the majority
of board members voted
in favor of the plan, one local
charged that it was far too
costly for only two new toilets,
which he said were not
enough to serve the thousands
of residents of the nearby Marlboro
Houses who frequent the
playground.
“You’re only putting in
two toilets, basically, for a million
bucks,” board member
Jeff Sanoff said to Maher at
the meeting.
But the price tag on the public
toilet house is lower than the
citywide average: an investigation
by The City found that the
BY JULIANNE MCSHANE
Relief is en route.
The city will spend $900,000
to refurbish a comfort station at
a Gravesend playground that
has been non-operational for
more than 20 years, offi cials
announced last week.
The announcement marks
the end of the Parks Department’s
years-long effort to fi nd
funding to reopen the Marlboro
Playground toilet house,
according to the agency’s borough
commissioner, who added
that the renovations will allow
youngsters and their parents to
spend more time enjoying their
playtime and less time worrying
about fi nding a lavatory.
“Our Commissioner Mitchell
Silver says it’s our business
to make sure you can do your
business,” Marty Maher told
members of Community Board
13 at its March 27 board meeting.
“We’ve been waiting for a
long time to get this done.”
Board members voted 27–3
at the meeting to signal their
support for the measure after
the city Public Design Commission
requested the board take
an advisory vote on the plan to
update the structure at the playground
at W. 11th Street and
Avenue W. Continued on page 12
Maeri Ferguson
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