Toilet Of The Week (35)

With public toilets as rare as hen’s teeth, any proposal to build some new ones has to be welcomed, but there is a stink brewing about a proposal to build a 150-sq-ft restroom with just one toilet in a town square in the Noe Valley area of San Francisco. It comes with a loodicrous price tag of $1.7m and will not be built until 2025 due to the city’s protracted planning processes. Only $750,000 of the $1.7m cost relates to actual construction costs, the other million dollars being spaffed on architect fees, project management, and surveying.

Even so, it is an eye-watering sum to spend a penny. Critics have pointed out that a 520-square-foot carsey was built in Gillette in Wyoming in just three months for the bargain basement price of $222,582 and it had six stalls, a mere $428 a square foot compared with the San Franciscan $11,333. However, others point out that that is the cost of building in Frisco and that the last two single-seater jobbies built in the city cost $1.6m and $1.7m respectively.

Perhaps a cheaper option will be to plant some bushes.