NYC Park’s Department is moving ahead with design plans to restore, make available and accessible bathrooms for the Stanton Street Parks Building (known as Building “A”).
The bathrooms are much needed. We are grateful that these will get underway and hope for an even more rapid completion than 2019.
We thank Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Council Member Margaret Chin for all their efforts and funding to realize these desperately needed facilities. Including showing up to visioning events and advocating for them!
Park’s Department will present the Designs for the Upcoming Bathrooms at the Community Board 3 Park’s Committee @ 6:30pm @ 30 Delancey Street at the BRC within Sara Roosevelt Park
Our Position on the Stanton Building:
We would like to see these bathrooms (or one of the Park’s staffed building’s bathrooms) opened 24/7 with security and maintenance staffing so that our homeless population has a place to use those facilities. It is the only humane, sanitary, dignified and safe way to address a very real need for the homeless and a real problem for those of us who try to keep this park clean. As the mayor has just said – homelessness isn’t going away anytime soon. So let’s provide folks with a bathroom that works and that is maintained. Thus making the bathrooms truly usable for the basketball & soccer players from the courts, children and parents from the playground and spray shower, Citi-bike users, casual park goers – everyone.
We think it would ensure that the homeless who are struggling already, are not set up to be targeted by (rightly) upset parents who fear using the bathrooms with their children or who fear the condition of the bathrooms.
We continue to advocate for the return of the building to community use as it is one of three out of four park buildings here that serve the borough of Manhattan and/or the entire 5 Boroughs of NYC.
We love to share with all of NYC, but it’s really too big a burden for this neighborhood and narrow park to be asked to have almost all of our buildings resources devoted to out-of-neighborhood needs.
Many of us also support, pending further community input, the idea of a shared building space that could be a drop-in center for those homeless in our park and a resiliency/bike repair/solar powering station.
This would rid us of the unsafe truck and car parking, thru-traffic on the ‘parkway’ of Stanton Street and the large unsightly and unsafe container outside the building.
The active community use would provide a sorely needed anchor for this section of the park. A section that is used by those who are in need of a daytime place to be (often because they live in shelters). It would make it safer and bring in more volunteer upkeep and beautifying for this section.
We would like to see a local, competent not-for-profit given a lease to manage the building and its programming and that would share space with other non-profits for meeting space, etc.
We received a D rating from NYer4Parks. We have to focus on how we realistically face our very real problems.