Park Peeing Has Got to Go, Says Board

 by Etta Sanders

Where do you take a child to the bathroom when you’re in Washington Market Park?

The question elicits an assortment of answers. Food Emporium. Bazzini. Borough of Manhattan Community College. McDonald’s.

Or, as three-year-old Sam responded, “In the bushes.”

Sam has a lot of company, according to the park’s board of directors. “We have a big problem with children urinating and defecating in the park,” said Liz Liebeskind, who is leading an assault on the problem. The board has posted signs in the park reminding caregivers to take children to the bathroom in Borough of Manhattan Community College, which is up the stairs.

Signs in Washington Market Park say children should go to the bathroom at BMCC and warn of $75 fines for caregivers if kids urinate in the park. Photo by Carl Glassman.

A bathroom was the main topic when the board took a walk through the park last month with the park’s landscape architect, Lee Weintraub, to discuss upcoming projects and improvements. “We’re going to put that as a top priority,” said Bill Watson, the board’s president.

The likely site for a bathroom would be adjacent to the community garden. Weintraub suggested a pavilion design that would mirror the gazebo at the other end of the park. But don’t expect to see it any time soon.

Building a bathroom will cost an estimated half-million dollars. And although the park will receive a $350,000 grant from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. for capital improvements, it is unclear whether at least a part of it will go towards a bathroom.

There are also issues of safety and maintenance to be worked out. Liebeskind expressed concern that a

bathroom will attract homeless people. Given all these factors, it will likely be at least three to five years before one can be built, said Watson.

Until that time, board members are hoping to crack down on children peeing in the shrubbery. The park board decided last month to hire a Parks Enforcement Patrol officer to enforce the rules. The new signs threaten caregivers who allow children to urinate in the park with a $75 fine. But Bill Castro, Manhattan Borough Parks Commissioner, told the Trib, “We’re not ever going to do that in Washington Market Park.”

When a reporter passed those comments on to Liebeskind, she said that the board would still consider hiring an officer as a deterrent.

Parents and caregivers interviewed said that it’s not easy to gather a child’s things and get him to the BMCC toilet in time. And many parents agreed with Doris Dell, mother of a three- and seven-year-old, who called the bathrooms “dirty and disgusting.”

Liebeskind, who has three young children, understands the difficulty of taking a child up the stairs, but she said that the problem has gotten out of hand, and she is especially concerned with children urinating in the sand.

“I think that the problem has reached a level that we need to take a very firm stand,” she said. “It is unfortunate that we have to present it in this way, but we spent the last six weeks telling people, and it’s still happening.”

Some parents asserted that an affluent neighborhood like Tribeca should be able to find a solution. “I could walk around with a paper bag one afternoon and probably collect $2,000 for a Port-a-Potty,” said a mother of two, who would not give her name. “That’s how easy it would be.”