Three Downtown public toilets costing roughly $700,000 each were set to debut on Columbus sidewalks in mid-September, but that timeline got clogged up by a host of regulatory and operational problems.
The city’s “Portland Loos” are equipped with a system that heats the plumbing fixtures to keep pipes from freezing and bursting during deep winter freezes, but that hasn’t kept the toilet bowls from icing up during extreme cold spells, said Mark Klingler, special projects manager with the Capital Crossroads & Discovery Special Improvement Districts, which is managing the installation for the city.
Also, a contractor paved over areas that city inspectors wanted to see before approving the work, causing another delay, said Tony Celebrezze, spokesperson for the city Building and Zoning Department.
While officials told The Dispatch late last summer that the new units were days or weeks from opening, “it’s sort of been ‘two (more) weeks’ ever since September,” Klingler said, noting the series of issues. “So what happened was a variety of both bureaucratic and technical holdups.”