The first of Bangor’s new fleet of public bathrooms will be installed and available for use by the end of next week.
Two of the five standalone bathrooms will be installed next week at the corner of Broad and Washington streets and in Cascade Park, according to Debbie Laurie, Bangor city manager. The remaining three will arrive in Coe Park, the Essex Woods dog park and across the street from the Bangor Public Library in the coming weeks.
The steel units will sit on concrete pads and be open at the bottom to allow for easy cleaning, ventilation and monitoring. The company creating the stalls will service them twice a week and parks and recreation staff will check on the facilities between those cleanings. The city can adjust how frequently the bathrooms are cleaned or move the stalls, if needed, Laurie said.
City councilors approved spending $250,000 in pandemic relief funding on the five bathrooms in January to quell long-standing complaints by residents and visitors that there aren’t enough public facilities available.
The new bathrooms will be open 24 hours a day, unlike most of Bangor’s existing public bathrooms that are in public buildings, such as the Bangor Public Library and Transit Center, which have set business hours. Some places in Bangor, like Cascade Park and City Forest, however, have portable or pit toilets.