news story / By Josephine Johnson

In the Can

What Arcata can learn from Eureka’s public bathrooms

(Jan. 5, 2012)  Ever wander the Arcata Plaza and have to go? Really have to get to a bathroom quick? Maybe you high-tailed it to Jacoby’s Storehouse and sneaked into its facilities. Or if things were a little less pressing, perhaps you fast-stepped it to the Co-op, got the door code, and maybe waited behind a person or two before finally breathing that sweet sigh of relief. When you gotta go, you gotta go. Trouble is, Arcata doesn’t have a public bathroom, and people have argued for years over whether it should. Occupiers renewed that debate in October, and now City Council is considering whether to build public facilities somewhere near downtown.

But public bathrooms pose their own set of challenges, including cleaning, maintenance and vandalism prevention — as well as a budget to pay for them.

Eureka’s public bathroom PHOTO BY JOSEPHINE JOHNSON

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And if the goal, at least partly, is to give the homeless somewhere they can go with dignity, Eureka’s experience might offer lessons for Arcata.

Eureka built restrooms in Old Town in 1993, partly in response to merchants who hoped that a public bathroom would reduce the number of non-shoppers seeking relief in their stores.

It has worked, several merchants say, but it’s a sort of a damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don’t undertaking.

The City of Eureka’s two unisex bathrooms, each with a single toilet, are tucked away behind the northwest corner of the downtown gazebo. Brick on the outside and with bare-bones accommodations inside — fluorescent lights, lime green cinder block walls, stainless toilets and wash basins — the bathrooms show signs of hard use. On different days in December, black plastic bags of old clothes were propped against the wall of one toilet, and the other had wads of cardboard in the toilet bowl.

Both bathrooms have custom, protective metal guards over the toilet paper dispensers. One has a stainless steel mirror, and the other lacks anything reflective. Each outside door locks, and homeless folks occasionally lock themselves inside, posing problems for the maintenance man who takes care of the Old Town restrooms.

“Bottom line is everyone goes to the bathroom, and a good functioning bathroom in Old Town is a necessity,” says Jonathan Buckmaster, who has maintained the facilities for the past five years. Buckmaster, an HSU graduate — as well as a clarinet prodigy who performed with L.A. big bands and symphonies throughout his teens - knows the ins and outs of these bathrooms. He opens them each morning around 8:30, returns to clean them at 4 p.m. and closes them at 5 p.m.

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