Modesto spending $1.4M to replace park bathrooms. City says they will be harder to vandalize

Margarita Ayala was leaving Modesto’s Robertson Road Park on Wednesday with her 2-year-old son in a stroller because she needed to go home to use the bathroom.

She said the park’s bathroom has been locked during the eight years she has been coming to the park at least twice a week.

Ayala said she sometimes takes her son, Ruben, and his 4-year-old sister to other parks because they have bathrooms. Ruben’s sister missed Wednesday’s park outing because she was at Head Start.

“Not the greatest,” Ayala said when asked what it was like to use those bathrooms. “Lots of homeless use the restrooms to wash themselves and do their personal hygiene situation.”

Modesto is spending $1.4 million from Measure H — the 1% general sales tax increase voters approved in November 2022 — to replace the bathrooms in Robertson Road, Mark Twain and Graceada parks.

The city says the new bathrooms will be harder to vandalize and misuse.

Modesto locks park bathrooms that are repeatedly vandalized or misused. The vandalism includes smashing or tearing out the porcelain sinks and toilets and setting wood-framed bathrooms on fire. The misuse includes people sleeping, using drugs and having sex in the bathrooms.

Robertson and Mark Twain are in west Modesto and Graceada is in the college area.

The new bathrooms should be ready by fall 2024, said Nathan Houx, Modesto’s park planning and development manager. Modesto has hired Nevada-based Public Restroom Co. for the project. The company will design the bathrooms, build them in a factory, transport them here and install them.

The $1.4 million includes a little more than $1 million for the bathrooms and $320,000 for site preparation work, which includes demolishing the old restrooms and utility connections for the new ones.

The new restrooms are among the $6.1 million in Measure H funding the city is spending in its current budget to tackle the more than $70 million in deferred parks maintenance, according to a report to the City Council, which approved the $1.4 million in spending and hiring Public Restroom Co. at its Nov. 7 meeting.

Modesto is spending Measure H on public safety, parks and recreation, blight, homelessness and other basics.

Houx said the three parks were picked because of requests from the community and because they are among the park bathrooms most in need of replacement.

He said there are no guarantees the new bathrooms won’t be vandalized or misused but they are designed and constructed to make that more difficult.

New restrooms have cinder-block walls and metal roofs

The restrooms are similar to the ones at Roosevelt and J.M. Pike parks as well as the park bathrooms in Village I. They are built with cinder-block walls and metal roofs, and the fixtures are made of steel.

These bathrooms are unisex, accommodate one user at a time, and their doors lock. Modesto’s older bathrooms are designed for multiple users and don’t have doors, including for the stalls.

Modesto is doing something different with the new bathrooms. The ones at Robertson and Mark Twain will have two separate bathrooms housed in a cinder-block building, while Graceada will have six separate bathrooms in one cinder-block building.

Graceada is getting more bathrooms because of the festivals and community events held in the park, which includes Mancini Bowl. The amphitheater seats about 1,300 people for summer concerts, movie nights and other events.

Houx said the city will keep closed one bathroom each at Robertson Road and Mark Twain, as well as some at Graceada. They will serve as backups in case the ones that are open are damaged and have to be closed for repairs.

Ayala was glad to hear about the new bathrooms.

She lives an eight-minute walk from Robertson Road Park and has adjusted to the bathroom being closed. But she said other people use the park. “It would be nice if they (the bathrooms) are working.”

But the new bathrooms still can be misused.

Roosevelt Park’s bathroom was clean and in good condition (even the hand dryer worked) Wednesday, while the Pike Park bathroom was a mess. The toilet would not flush, much of the sink was coated with a black substance, clothes were strewn on the floor, parts of which were white with foot powder. There was a bottle of Arm & Hammer foot powder on the floor.

Houx said bathrooms should be less likely to be vandalized or misused as the city hires more park rangers. The city also is spending Measure H money to hire more park maintenance workers.

Not every park has a bathroom

Modesto has about 50 bathrooms in its 75 parks. Houx said one reason a park may not have a bathroom is a neighborhood may not want one because of the potential it will be misused. The city solicits community input as part of building a park.

Houx said that works for a neighborhood park whose users live nearby, but not for parks with sports fields, or regional parks.

He said the city probably needs to replace most of its existing park bathrooms because of their age, condition or because they do not comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

Graceada, Pike and Robertson Road are the only bathroom replacement projects in the current budget, which started July 1. Houx said parks and rec will bring more bathroom replacement projects to the City Council as it considers and adopts Modesto’s annual budgets.

He said parks and rec balances the need for replacing bathrooms with other park needs. The department’s other Measure H projects in this year’s budget include replacing eight park playgrounds, upgrading the lighting at and resurfacing tennis courts, resurfacing basketball courts and repairing park parking lots.