City Beaches To Sport New Bathrooms

Beach bathrooms in Long Beach are deteriorating, so this week the City Council approved the purchase of three new bathrooms to help change that.
One of the pre-fabricated bathroom buildings will go at the Marine Stadium launch ramp, one at the Claremont launch ramp, and one in Rainbow Harbor downtown.
“These are solid concrete buildings that we expect to last 25 to 30 years,” Phil Hester, director of the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department, told the council.
Money for the bathrooms — which will cost $850,000 total — will come from the city’s Tidelands Fund and from a grant from the California Department of Boating and Waterways. The city’s tidelands fund both collects and spends money in the city’s beaches and marinas, and it is doing well now due to the increase in oil prices.
Long Beach’s beach bathrooms do not have a good reputation, and city Parks and Recreation staff admitted that was deserved.
In a 2006 review, 70% of the marina and beach bathrooms were considered “below acceptable or satisfactory industry or customer standards.” That includes the potential shutting down of some facilities, the council was told.
This purchase is the first step in replacing and renovating all of the city’s beach bathrooms, the council was told.
The structures are prefabricated and preplumbed restroom buildings from a company called Romtec, which specializes in manufacturing of these types of buildings. The Oregon-based company has provided similar bathroom facilities to the East Bay Regional Park District in California, parks in Bend, Ore., the Coronado National Forest (northeast of Tucson, Ariz.) among other park facilities throughout the nation.